Global Surface Air Temperatures

[BornFromTheVoid]

I thought a thread to discuss the current and near term global temperatures might be useful.

To start off with, the NCDC June data has been updated, and it was the joint 5th warmest June on record, and 7th warmest year to date (0.07C above last year and 0.13C below the warmest on record, 2010). All the while, ENSO remains of the negative side of neutral
 

Global Highlights

• The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth highest on record, at 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F).
  
  
• The global land surface temperature was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F), marking the third warmest June on record. For the ocean, the June global sea surface temperature was 0.48°C (0.86°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), the 10th warmest June on record.
  
  
• The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–June period (year-to-date) was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 13.5°C (56.3°F), tying with 2003 as the seventh warmest such period on record
  

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/6

With upper ocean heat content building again across the ENSO region, I wouldn't be surprised to the next batch of ENSO forecast have us on the +ve side of neutral by Autumn, with maybe Nino developing during winter?


http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

Should that happen, we could potentially challenge for a top 3 year.

[deep octopus]

Thanks BFTV. I thought about doing one specifically for NASA's (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) GISS, and its Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) data, but you beat me to the punch. Since LOTI has very high coverage (picking up readings from the Arctic and Antarctic better than NCDC or HadCrut 4), it's my favorite source of surface temperature data.

It would be appropriate in my view to provide regular updates (ideally monthly) on the state of the world climate according to the L-OTI, NCDC, and HadCrut, similar to how we have threads dedicated to IJIS-JAXA, Cryosphere Today, and the like, which all give regular updates on the state of the climate from the perspective of Arctic sea ice. I would clarify that the thread might rather read as "Global Surface Land and Ocean Temperatures", since surface ocean temperatures can include shallow depths of open water (roughly 5 meters deep, if I'm not mistaken).

For NASA's LOTI, the wealth of data and its methodology is easily found here, and includes helpful maps that can be used to analyze zonal (latitudinal, really) temperature trends as well as global.

NASA clocked June 2013 as the 2nd hottest June on record, after 1998, at 0.68 degrees C above the 1951-1980 average.


Looking at NASA's data further, it appears 2013 is the sixth warmest from the January through June period (behind 2010, 2007, 1998, 2002, and 2005.)

[deep octopus]

NASA's maps will update on their own since I'm linking directly to them, so I imagine logging each month's temperature anomaly will be more of a time capsule than anything. Nevertheless, new data from GISS says July 2013 was 0.53 degrees above 1951-1980.



Here in the eastern US, it has felt like we've been deprived of a proper summer this year. Lots of cool, wet days, with spates of hot weather during a few weeks. Overall, a complete flip to where we were last 2012 with record-breaking heat waves. It was rather unbearable last year, but I don't much like these unseasonably cool days. August this year feels more like late September. My coriander is loving this weather, at least! We'll see what autumn brings us.

[BornFromTheVoid]

It says +0.54C on the data table page, so joint 9th warmest July, which makes it the 7th warmest year on record to date. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Not bad for 7 months that have averaged ENSO -ve anyway. I do suspect, that the continuing ENSO -ve values will prevent a top 5 year for 2013 though.


UAH still hasn't updated their long term data. They've only released the last few months of the newest version, but haven't updated the old data sets.

[deep octopus]

Most models are projecting ENSO neutral for the remainder of the year.

Bureau of Meteorology in Australia shows the latest ensemble continuing to slowly emerge to a +ve ENSO state into winter 2013-2014, but none of the models show either a convincing El Niño or La Niña in the cards.



That said, it wouldn't be impossible to breach the top 5 without El Niño. In 2005, a neutral year that shifted to La Niña, exceptional warmth nearly every month of the year (anomalies between 0.6 and 0.8 degrees C) lifted it to hottest year status until 2010. Autumn 2005 was particularly warm. Albeit, 2005 was slightly +ve most of the year. That said, I think a combination of a sharply negative NAO/AO during the winter months in this year (in part from the SSW event?) prevented much warmer than average temperatures in the northern hemisphere. So that has worked against the global average for a while. The southern hemisphere, however, is sizzling, compared to its recent years.

[BornFromTheVoid]

The monthly CPC ENSO forecast should be out today or tomorrow here  http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CDB/

The weekly updates show the +ve sub surface anomalies moving east and upward.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf



There is generally a 4 month lag in the impact of ENSO variations on global temperatures, so we probably got a slight temperature boost at the beginning of this year from the +ve ESNO in Autumn 2012, and could see the recent -ve ENSO values affect the Autumn and early winter global temps.

I don't think that those +ve sub surface anomalies will act quickly enough to have much effect on global temps this year. I reckon somewhere around 9th highest by years end on LOTI.

It will be interesting to see what the SOTC report shows (hopefully this evening or Monday).

[deep octopus]

Latest CFS model ensemble mean for Nino 3.4 is showing positive SSTs going into autumn 2013 and upward to winter and early spring 2014.


NOAA still officially forecasting ENSO neutral conditions through the fall, and the models confirm this. But it's upping the ante for 2014 expectations.

[JimD]

Deep Octopus

Question.  I have noticed over time that the focus always seems to be on Region 3.4.  Why is that the region to focus on?  I have never found an explanation for why it is the most important.  If you check this link

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/nino_regions.shtml

it shows that region 3.4 is in the middle of the Pacific.  Why is that region more important than the region next to South America for instance.  Is it because 3.4 is a transition area or because it is some sort of average?

Thanks

[BornFromTheVoid]

The July 2013 Global State of the Climate Report report is out now.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/7

It was the 6th warmest over land and ocean combined.

8th warmest over land, 5th warmest over ocean.

About the ocean temperature
This marks the warmest July for the oceans since July 2009, when the last El Niño phase on record was beginning.

Joint 6th warmest January to July on record.

[deep octopus]

Jim,

You're mainly correct about the point on transition. Without getting too much into the weeds of oceanographic theory, since El Niño/La Niña phenomena remain somewhat complex events, a short and skinny of Nino 3.4's origins as a metric for defining these events is explained by the topographic nature of the equatorial Pacific, functions of the trade winds, mainly. To the west (Nino 4), the Pacific Ocean has a deep mixing layer (thermocline), such that, say, the isotherm at 25 degrees C is deeper at the Solomon Islands, while the thermocline is much shallower in the east off of Peru (Nino 1+2).

The trades push against the western Pacific and an accumulation of warm water (the "warm pool") and higher sea level is formed naturally, while the eastern Pacific is shallower and cooler. Warm water upwells in the west; cool water upwells in the east. This temperature difference drives the Walker Circulation, which typifies weather patterns in the Pacific and ultimately affects weather in much of the world. The stronger the pressure gradient and trade winds, the stronger the Walker Circulation, and this usually is associated with La Niña. Because of imbalances in the wind stress, however, this circulation can (and often does) break down, and the warm water in the western Pacific  moves eastward towards the South American coast. The thermocline therefore deepens in the east, driving the positive feedback that causes trade winds to weaken, causing water to warm further, which weakens winds still. El Niño. Introducing ocean currents to this function would make this entirely too lengthy, so I'll stop there.

It is said that Nino 3.4 is kind of the "sweet spot" where the atmospheric-oceanic teleconnection takes place, where it is closer to the warm pool than Nino 3, and convection appears during El Niño. Kevin Trenberth has noted that other metrics, such as the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and Nino 3 have been used before to define El Niño/La Niña, but their shortcomings were supplanted by the Nino 3.4 metric that has been largely adopted.

The paper that is germane to this is Trenberth 1997, "The Definition of El Niño"
LINK

Nino regions 3 and 1+2 have been considered important in recent years, due to the discovery of new El Niño and La Niña events called Modiki El Niño and Modiki La Niña, where Nino 3.4 is warmer (cooler) than average, while surrounding regions are cooler (warmer) than average. This has somewhat different atmospheric effects.

[JimD]

Deep Octopus

Thanks.

Another question:

In the abstract of your link it states that the metric for determining an El Nino/La Nina is a 0.4C deviation from the norm for 6 months and states that this occurs 31% of the time for El Nino's and 23% of the time for La Nina's.  Since I was under the impression that La Nina's were more common than El Nino's I went searching for a graph which I had seen before.

http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm

This is just a big version of the graph in the article it turns out except that it is current to date.

Since the paper was written in 97 the incidence of El Nino conditions have only been 50% of that of La Nina's (data at bottom of page is what I used).  This is clearly a big change from the historical norm that the paper described. It sure seems that the comment in the paper that since 1979 the bias has been warm and dominated by El Nino is no longer accurate and has now flipped entirely the other way and since 97 the norm has been cool and dominated by La Nina.  Even including the very strong El Nino that occurred right after the paper was written.

The question is:   What is the relevance of this, if any?  Does it tell us what we can expect in terms of the next El Nino and how strong it could be? Is it too short a period of time to be able to say anything?

[deep octopus]

I figure people may want to have spreadsheets of different global surface temperature data, so here's a kind of running list featuring many of them for reference:

Global Monthly and Annual Data

NASA's LOTI (u1951-1980 baseline):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

NOAA (1901-2000 average baseline i.e. 20th century average):
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

Met Office's HadCRUT4 (1961-1990 average baseline):
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4-gl.dat

Cowtan & Way's Interpolated HadCRUT4 (1961-1990 average baseline):
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/had4_krig_v2_0_0.txt


Regional Data

NASA's LOTI by annual zonal means (1951-1980 average baseline) (Hat-tip Chris Reynolds):
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt

The nice thing about NASA's maps page is how freely you can toggle the blending radii and the baselines to measure anomalies. A project I am working on is breaking down NASA's gridded data by latitude to get a better sense of how each zone is performing on a monthly basis. The gridded data, when you place them in a spreadsheet and then weigh them by longitudinal area, tend to be more precise, though it basically perfectly matches the tabulated data (as expected.)

[deep octopus]

Jim,

There are certainly a few papers floating around that discuss the near-term predictions for ENSO that I'm hoping to get around to reading, including L'Heureux et al. 2013 on the strengthening of the Walker Circulation, putting a recent bias La Niña, while Jinbao Li argued recently that global warming may have caused El Niño to be more active in the 20th century. This area needs much more research, and I'm not comfortable saying one way or the other how the next century or so will turn out for ENSO. But my basic understanding is that ENSO, as an internal variability, has no (or shouldn't have any) long-term bias one way or the other as to whether we see more El Niños or La Niñas. Recent La Niña events should be, at some later point, be retaliated by more El Niños, such that the long-term natural output zeroes out.

It's important to recall that a warm PDO phase also tends to both encourage El Niño events and amplify their strength, while cold PDO phases have the opposite effect. We've been in a cool PDO phase since the early 2000s, ending a period of a warm phase PDO since about the late 1970s (which, by no surprise, was at the foot of the "rapid warming" trend.)

In my opinion, it's reasonable to assume that an El Niño-dominant period is perhaps within a few years away, should PDO trend warmer. This was touched upon at Skeptical Science regarding a "looming climate shift" in which we move out of the hiatus decade during a cool PDO phase and return to more rapid surface warming. Predicting the strength of the next El Niño is tricky, but a very strong El Niño is not usually without several months of warning, as was the case when El Niño appeared in May 1997 and teased its way into a stellar outburst the next winter. Scientists also have a sense of how strong an El Niño will be based on the warm water volume (WWV) and the amount of ocean heat accumulation, which peaks just as El Niño begins (with a lag of about two months.) So, a major spike in heat content would portend a stronger event.

[ChrisReynolds]

Deep Octopus,

I find GISS LOTI in zones to be quite useful.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt

[JimD]

Deep Octopus (and anyone else who might be interested)

I found the following press article, and eventually a link to the research paper mentioned in it, that indicates the Potsdam Institute has developed a model that has improved the ability to predict El Nino's out as far as 12 months ahead of time.

Sounds pretty interesting.  Any comments?

...The new system, built on a network of temperature records around the Pacific Ocean since 1950, correctly spotted El Nino events a year in advance more than half the time and gave false alarms fewer than one year in 10.

From the abstract:

....Our approach starts from the evidence that a large-scale cooperative mode - linking the El Ni\~no-basin (equatorial Pacific corridor) and the rest of the ocean - builds up in the calendar year before the warming event. On this basis, we can develop an efficient 12 months-forecasting scheme, i.e., achieve some doubling of the early-warning period. Our method is based on high-quality observational data as available since 1950 and yields hit rates above 0.5, while false-alarm rates are below 0.1.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/early-el-nino-warning-could-aid-farmers-20130702-2p8lg.html

The below link leads to the abstract and a pdf link there to the paper itself.
Josef Ludescher 30 Apr 2013

http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8039

[deep octopus]

Thanks, Chris. I've added the table to the list.

-----

Hey Jim,

I remember reading about this earlier in the summer, but hadn't gone through the actual paper. I just took a read through it. It's an interesting concept and would serve well to be followed up with inclusion of other variables they promise to review (wind speed, pressure, etc.), but has a few apparent shortcomings just from reading the graph showing strength versus Niño 3.4 index. It seems they've assumed quite a bit of leeway with respect to defining the threshold to forecast El Niño. For instance, though they mention false alarms, the algorithm completely misses the 1966 and 2009/2010 El Niño events, and although they say that only regard the "first alarm" if there are "multiple alarms" in a calendar year, they don't really show what the threshold crossings at 1988, 2005, or 2006 mean, though 2006 did result in a fairly weak El Niño in late 2006/early 2007. Potential overlap with La Niña must make this even more challenging to determine its usefulness. The first derivative of their function may give some clues though, since when you assume that, 1966 and 2010 are called because of spikes in their function, though it creates more false alarms. Something's missing and I understand that this is a pretty exploratory exercise. And I know they aren't making this argument, but there's some mystery as to why some threshold crossings result in much more aggressive El Niños than others. Again, maybe just something they'll review as they improve on the model.

I recall Michael Mann not yet warming up to the paper's conclusions and I'm not sure I do either. But it is interesting nonetheless. I'm not sure how close we are to El Niño forecasts going beyond a year, but I honestly don't think we're quite there yet.

[JimD]

Thanks, that was a great rest of the story!

Putting my farmers hat on for a second I am not sure that a 50% success rate of prediction would be good enough to really help the crop farmers.   It might leave them in a sort of limbo on whether to switch crop mixes for the next year or not.   If you got to 75% that would definitely make a difference.

But the 50% might make a big difference to ocean fishing plans as the impact on that by El Nino's is so dramatic.  For a forecast El Nino year you might mothball a bunch of the fleet for the year to cut losses.

[werther]

In the light of the last two posts, anyone put this study on the Forum yet?
" Surface cooling in equatorial Pacific drives decade-long pause in global temperature rise."
Jeff Tollefson
Nature 28 August 2013

www.nature.com/news/tropical-ocean-key-to-global-warming-hiatus-1.13620

[werther]

BTW I saw that Tamino has a lot more on the study above... Great stuff!

[deep octopus]

Latest NOAA CFS (Climate Forecasting System) ensemble mean for Nino 3.4 showing a borderline, very weak El Niño for late autumn 2013/winter 2014. None of the models are predicting La Niña, and several go above the El Niño threshold of 0.5 C. The monthly bulletin for ENSO should be arriving in about a week. I expect the ENSO neutral call to remain, as close to the threshold as this is, but this should pique my curiosity over the weeks.

Whereas a positive Nino 3.4 is not an all-or-nothing for the climate response (even slightly positive would tend to lift global temperatures), if an El Niño does gain traction, 2014 could have some very warm months in store and contest 2005 and 2010 for the hottest year title.

[JimD]

DO

You called it correctly.  NOAA just published the 5 Sept forecast and it says:

ENSO-neutral is favored through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2013-14.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

[deep octopus]

Yeah, I have a feeling 2014 is going to be another difficult year to forecast without a clear El Niño or La Niña, but a slightly +ve Pacific Ocean gives me the thought that 2013 will finish slightly warmer than 2012, and 2014 warmer than 2013. The drivers for North America and Europe could be the AO and NAO again. The PDO has been looking suspiciously in the warmer phase recently, seeing the "horseshoe" of warm water hugging the Pacific northwestern coastline.


We'll see in due time.

Also, now's a good time to give an update on global temperatures again. August 2013 numbers are out from GISS and NOAA. GISS has August 2013 at 0.62 C over 1951-1980, making it the 5th warmest August on record. There was also a big downward revision to June 2013 in GISS, from 0.66 C to 0.60 C.



NOAA's State of the Climate report is hot of the press as well:

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for August 2013 tied with 2005 as the fourth highest in the 1880–2013 record, at 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F).

This year was also the 5th warmest summer on record:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the June–August period was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F), tying with 2009 as the fifth warmest such period on record.

Biggest news of all, 2013 tied for hottest August on record for ocean temperatures.

So, it's looking like 2013 is on pace to finish the 6th warmest year on record based on NOAA, and 9th warmest year so far based on NASA.

[BornFromTheVoid]

September was the joint 3rd warmest on record (+0.37C) with 2012, behind just 2009 (+0.41) and 2010 (+0.45C), according to UAH.



The year to date is joint 5th warmest on record.

Below are Jan to Sep temperatures (red) with the 9 month ENSO 3.4 anomaly (with a 3 month lag) in green.

[deep octopus]

Despite U.S. government shutdown, NOAA's CFS page still regularly updates. It's the only guidance from NOAA at this point that seems to give updates on ENSO. For a few weeks now, the model ensembles have been stubbornly suggesting a weak El Niño starting around NDJ 2013/2014 and ending by MJJ 2014. No models predicting La Niña from winter 2013 through spring 2014.

[idunno]

Spencer's page is still up too;

http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Starting to look like warming wasn't so much paused as "buffering".

[JimD]

Since this is sort of the ENSO thread I thought I would post this here.

Robust twenty-first-century projections of El Niño and related precipitation variability

(full article is paywalled)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12580.html

...By the mid- to late twenty-first century, the projections include an intensification of both El-Niño-driven drying in the western Pacific Ocean and rainfall increases in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific......

...This study finds that both wet and dry anomalies will be greater in future El Niño years. This means that ENSO-induced droughts and floods will be more intense in the future....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24494398

[deep octopus]

Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) showing September 2013 to be the 2nd warmest going back to 1891.



Now that the US federal government shutdown has ended, NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis shows September 2013 well placed as the 1st warmest going back to 1948. One can view a plot I made
here:

All evidence so far points to September 2013 being a warm one, given UAH, JMA, and NCEP/NCAR. Just waiting for further confirmation from NCDC, NASA, and Met Office.

[Neven]

Thanks a lot for this, DO. I don't have time to keep track of all of this stuff (I used to update a GISTEMP spreadsheet, but things change every month), so it's great to read these updates.

[deep octopus]

Thanks Neven, I'm happy to break down this kind of info for people to read.

NCDC has just released its September 2013 global temperature report, by the way. It falls in line with the other temperature data so far.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/9

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth highest for September on record, at 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F).

The globally-averaged temperature for the first nine months of 2013 (January–September) was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.5°F), tying with 2003 as the sixth warmest such period since records began in 1880. The average global land temperature for this period was the seventh warmest on record, at 0.93°C (1.67°F) above the long-term average. Notably, Australia, the southern Philippines, and part of central Asia were record warm for January–September.

[ritter]

But I thought we were on hiatus! 

[BornFromTheVoid]

Lets not forget that this is all in a year that's remained well on the negative side of neutral for ENSO. Just imagine if we had an El Nino!

[deep octopus]

*drum roll*

NASA's GISS figures for September 2013 are out, and they're nasty.

+0.74 C, globally, over 1951-1980. September 2013 ties with 2005 for hottest September on NASA's record. This also makes it the largest anomaly for any month since November 2010.

Graphic forthcoming.

EDIT:

[JimD]

DO

Very interesting.  I know you keep track of the PDO and ENSO 3.4 indices.  What are the current trends with them?  Are they a possible factor in the Sept numbers. 

[deep octopus]

Jim,

Amazingly, ENSO is pretty much neutral and had been slightly negative for several months this year (Nino 3.4 is projected to go slightly positive by next winter, but no El Niño is expected.) PDO is still negative, but trending north. Last PDO index from University of Washington was -0.48 in September, compared with -1.04 in August. Given this, oceanic variations likely had little role in September's strong figures, and if they were to, it wouldn't be apparent until a few months out (there's generally a lag between tropical ocean and atmospheric temperatures.) However, 2013 has been unquestionably one of the hottest years for global ocean temperatures (record high in North Pacific), rivaling El Niño years 1998 and 2010. Fair enough to say the sea is still rapidly heating up.



NASA's global land-ocean reading isn't so unusual, I suppose, given that several months in the recent past have spiked north of 0.7 C several times in the past without ENSO. In March 2002, we had +0.89 C warming during a neutral period, and 2005 was a neutral year with very warm months. It's more likely that we're seeing the gradual northerly trend at work, and this is a spike that is slightly above what had been "normal" for a while. Supposing that the signal to noise ratio is declining with each reading like this past September's, AGW gives us plenty of reasons to see more months like this.

[deep octopus]

GISS is reporting October 2013 at +0.61 C, globally, over 1951-1980. October 2013 ties with 2004 and 2011 for 8th hottest October on NASA's record.



At this point, it's looking pretty safe to bet that 2013 will have finished warmer than 2012, in large part thanks to a warmer January-March period than 2012 without a La Niña, and a strong warming in the oceans.

[BornFromTheVoid]

November was the hottest on record according to GISS, with an anomaly of 0.77C. This makes the year to date the 6th warmest on record.




UAH had November as the joint 9th warmest, making the year to date the joint 4th warmest on record.

[BornFromTheVoid]

JMA has updated, with November being the warmest on record, an anomaly of +0.31C, 0.05C warmer than 2nd place (2001).

[BornFromTheVoid]

Warmest Autumn on record for the JMA too

[deep octopus]

Looks like the consensus is that November was a warm one alright.

NOAA is just reporting that November 2013 was the hottest such month on record globally. January through November period was 4th hottest on record. That's an incredible jump from last month, when 2013 was 7th hottest overall. A decently warm December (and despite the cold snaps over Africa and North America, this looks to hold) would probably keep 2013 in the top 5 under NOAA's record I'm guessing. Impressive on several levels, including the fact that 2013 was an overall "cooler" than average year in the tropical Pacific.

November:

Land temperatures, +1.43 C from average, 2nd hottest.
Ocean temperatures, +0.54 C from average, 3rd hottest.
Overall, +0.78 C from average, hottest.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Latest UAH data is out, and December had an anomaly +0.265C, making it the 2nd warmest December on record after 2003 (+0.37).
 
That puts 2013 at +0.24C, the 4th warmest year on record, behind 2005 (+0.26), 2010 (+0.40) and 1998 (+0.42).
It also appears to be the warmest ENSO neutral year on record.

[deep octopus]

Japan Meteorological Agency has determined that 2013 was the 2nd hottest year since 1891, rivaled only by 1998.

Based on JMA's figures, the ranking of the five hottest years are now as follows:
1st. 1998 (+0.22°C)
2nd. 2013 (+0.20°C)
3rd. 2010 (+0.19°C),
4th. 2005 (+0.17°C),
5th. 2009,2002 (tied) (+0.16°C)]

NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis suggests that 2013 was the 3rd hottest year since 1948, behind 2010 and 2005, respectively.

[deep octopus]

It's official.

2013 was the 4th hottest year on record.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/13

December 2013 was the 3rd hottest such month on NOAA's record as well. Bad news all around as we head into 2014 with possibility of El Niño later on.

[BornFromTheVoid]

NASA has it as the 7th warmest on record. But that doesn't seem to tie in with the table data available for download, which has it as either joint 4th or 6th warmest, depending on how many decimal places you want to use.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/#.Ut7J_xBFDIW

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

[deep octopus]

Here's NASA's graphic for December 2013 temperature anomalies.




And here is the summary graphic for 2013.

[Shared Humanity]

NASA has it as the 7th warmest on record. But that doesn't seem to tie in with the table data available for download, which has it as either joint 4th or 6th warmest, depending on how many decimal places you want to use.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/#.Ut7J_xBFDIW

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Given we are talking a 4C to 6C warmer world by 2100, I'm not sure I can draw any comfort from decimal places. 

[crandles]

NASA has it as the 7th warmest on record. But that doesn't seem to tie in with the table data available for download, which has it as either joint 4th or 6th warmest, depending on how many decimal places you want to use.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/#.Ut7J_xBFDIW

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

1st 2010 67
2nd 2005 66
3rd 2007 63
4th 2002 62 (744/12)
5th 1998 62 (742/12)
6th 2003 61 (730/12)
7th 2013 61 (728/12)
8th 2006 60 (716/12)
9th 2009 60 (715/12)

Looks like 7th per table to me. Though if tied with 2006 and 2009, why not also tied with 2003?

[AndrewP]

NASA has it as the 7th warmest on record. But that doesn't seem to tie in with the table data available for download, which has it as either joint 4th or 6th warmest, depending on how many decimal places you want to use.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/#.Ut7J_xBFDIW

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Given we are talking a 4C to 6C warmer world by 2100, I'm not sure I can draw any comfort from decimal places. 

umm what? You are aware the AR5 projects 1-3C aren't you? And even that requires a modest to rapid acceleration of the mean rate since 1970.

[wili]

?? Are you thinking of the projections to 2050?



http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/near-term-ar5/

They were talking about 2100.

[BornFromTheVoid]

NASA has it as the 7th warmest on record. But that doesn't seem to tie in with the table data available for download, which has it as either joint 4th or 6th warmest, depending on how many decimal places you want to use.

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/#.Ut7J_xBFDIW

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

1st 2010 67
2nd 2005 66
3rd 2007 63
4th 2002 62 (744/12)
5th 1998 62 (742/12)
6th 2003 61 (730/12)
7th 2013 61 (728/12)
8th 2006 60 (716/12)
9th 2009 60 (715/12)

Looks like 7th per table to me. Though if tied with 2006 and 2009, why not also tied with 2003?

I see the problem. It seems they adjusted the monthly data for this year, with some months being 0.06C different to earlier in the year, hence 2013 being ranked differently when I worked it out. Have updated the spread sheet now though.

A more detailed analysis of this years temperature http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140121_Temperature2013.pdf

[crandles]

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter12.pdf
(warning large download 26Mb)


has the projections for 2100 and beyond.

Fig 12.5 shows

Time series of global annual mean surface air temperature anomalies (relative to 1986–2005) from CMIP5 concentration-driven experiments. Projections are shown for each RCP for the multi model mean (solid lines) and the 5–95% range (±1.64 standard deviation) across the distribution of individual models (shading).

The range for RCP8.5 seems to be about 2.7 to 5C for 2100. If SH was talking above preindustial that would translate to about 3.3 to 5.6C above pre-industrial. So 4 to 6C looks a little higher than RCP8.5 but given Sherwood et al higher sensitivity more like reality and a belief that we will continue BAU rather than cutting ff use in response to increasing impacts, it doesn't seem an unreasonable range to suggest.

RCP6 seems to suggest about 1.2 to 3.2C above 1986–2005 for 2100.

So I don't think the confusion is with projections to 2050 but between RCP 6 and RCP 8.5.