With 10 days left of February, it is virtually certain that February 2016 will be the warmest February that have been observed. Of more importance is how warm the last days of the month wil be, does anyone have an idea about this?
If the big anomalies remains in charge and in terms of Nick Stokes normal period 1994-2013 exceed 0,7oC there are a small chance that the monthly anomaly will be close to +1,5oC above pre-industrial time.
Eyeballing the forecast there seems to be a decent chance for the warmth to continue through the rest of the month.
Best, LMV
Per the attached GFS 2m temp anom forecast for Feb 28, 2016 the Global temp anom then will be 0.809C. That said, I note the relatively low 2m temperatures over the Southern Ocean, which is likely a result of ice meltwater from the acceleration of AIS mass loss. Thus looking at the measured GMST changes may be giving a false sense of security, and perhaps policy makers should have listened to Hansen in the early 1980's.
Not to sound too much like a Jeremiah, but not only is ice meltwater in the Southern Ocean masking some of the GMST increase (while still promoting climate change), the following two articles show that: (a) Per Francey et al (2016) a relatively recent atmospheric circulation pattern is trapping more CO₂ in the NH than in the SH (see the first image) which will likely accelerate temperature increase in the NH (where most of the people are) faster than the AR5 projections; and (b) Per the Pedro et al (2016) reference in the second half of this century changes in ocean circulation patterns could result in a rapid/abrupt warming of Antarctica (see the second & third image); which would rapidly increase GMST at that time:
The first linked (open access) reference cites an example of inhomogeneity in atmospheric CO₂ distribution, in this case a 2009-2010 step in atmospheric CO₂ difference between the Northern & Southern Hemispheres. This difference appears to be due to a sustained (at least until 2015) change in atmospheric circulation; which must also be modeled by future state of the art ESMs:
Francey, R. J. and Frederiksen, J. S.: The 2009–2010 step in atmospheric CO2 interhemispheric difference, Biogeosciences, 13, 873-885, doi:10.5194/bg-13-873-2016, 2016.
http://www.biogeosciences.net/13/873/2016/Abstract. The annual average CO2 difference between baseline data from Mauna Loa and the Southern Hemisphere increased by ∼ 0.8 µmol mol−1 (0.8 ppm) between 2009 and 2010, a step unprecedented in over 50 years of reliable data. We find no evidence for coinciding, sufficiently large source and sink changes. A statistical anomaly is unlikely due to the highly systematic nature of the variation in observations. An explanation for the step, and the subsequent 5-year stability in this north–south difference, involves interhemispheric atmospheric exchange variation. The selected data describing this episode provide a critical test for studies that employ atmospheric transport models to interpret global carbon budgets and inform management of anthropogenic emissions.
Caption: "Figure 1. North–south differences and growth rates in CO2 since 1990. Panel (a) shows, on the left axis, annual average (January–December) 1C (ppm) from three programs – CSIRO, NOAA (mlo–cgo), and SIO (mlo–spo) – plotted mid-year. On the right axis are reported anthropogenic emissions (dashed line), with the correction suggested by Francey et al. (2013) (shaded), scaled so that the overall slope is similar to that from the long-term mlo–spo SIO record. Panel (b): CSIRO (mlo, cgo, spo) and NOAA (mlo) growth rates, dC / dt , plotted mid- month."
J.B. Pedro, T. Martin, E. J. Steig, M. Jochum, W. Park & S.O. Rasmussen (20 February 2016), "Southern Ocean deep convection as a driver of Antarctic warming events", Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL067861
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL067861/abstractAbstract: "Simulations with a free-running coupled climate model show that heat release associated with Southern Ocean deep convection variability can drive centennial-scale Antarctic temperature variations of up to 2.0 °C. The mechanism involves three steps: Preconditioning: heat accumulates at depth in the Southern Ocean; Convection onset: wind and/or sea-ice changes tip the buoyantly unstable system into the convective state; Antarctic warming: fast sea-ice–albedo feedbacks (on annual–decadal timescales) and slow Southern Ocean frontal and sea-surface temperature adjustments to convective heat release (on multidecadal–century timescales) drive an increase in atmospheric heat and moisture transport toward Antarctica. We discuss the potential of this mechanism to help drive and amplify climate variability as observed in Antarctic ice-core records."
Caption for third image: "Figure S2. Map showing the surface-air-temperature (SAT) anomaly during stage 2 (cf. Figure 3d). Circles mark locations of ice-core records. Color-coding of the circles depicts the maximum lagged correlation coefficient of modeled local SAT with SAT over the convection area (black cross in Weddell Sea). Lower panels show time series of modeled SAT anomalies at selected ice-core sites (red) together with the SAT anomaly over the convection region (black). Note different y-axis scaling for red lines."