[cogitator]

It has to be surface measurements because that's what the record is based on. No one is defining the new global surface temperature record with lower troposphere measurements.

It's an official new record if it's 0.05 deg. C* higher in all three surface temperature records: NOAA, Hadley Centre UK, and GISS.

* Exceeds current error bars.

Here's the chart for 2005 from NOAA. You can see the size of the error bars.

Here's what NOAA says about 2005, by the way:

"The 2005 global temperature was statistically indistinguishable from the standing record set in 1998. One data set, in use at NCDC since the late 1990s, produced a global annual temperature for 2005 that was slightly below 1998 (below left). An improved data set, which incorporates innovative algorithms that better account for factors such as changes in spatial coverage and evolving observing methods, results in 2005 being slightly warmer than 1998. (below right)."

Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2005/ann/global.html

Question for the skeptics in general (not necessarily palmer): If there's been a decade-long cooling trend since 1998, how could 2005 have been as warm as 1998?

[denydenydeny]

Question for the skeptics in general (not necessarily palmer): If there's been a decade-long cooling trend since 1998, how could 2005 have been as warm as 1998?

You beg the question of why, if global warming is such an unstoppable juggernaut of doom, 2007 was significantly cooler.

[editor-surveyor]

Your phony chart is still the one that leaves out the siberian data without correction. Pure propaganda, as is to be expected from socialists.

[palmer]

The record is in the LT measurements. Look again at post 63, there is obviously record warming in 1998. The surface charts you are posting are flawed for many reasons. One that your link doesn't mention is the update to the US temperatures pointed out in 2007 by McIntyre. (yes, the effect on the world wasn't as much as on the U.S.) The pivot points and combining of different measurement records is a bigger problem (e.g. here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2033) If you want to avoid these problems and look strictly at atmospheric trends with profound ENSO influences, look at the atmosphere. If you want the ENSO somewhat smoothed out but at the cost of opaque and questionable adjustments, go ahead and use your data. We'll see where we are in five years (presuming an El Nino will happen by then).

[Old Professer]

Looking at that chart and then remembering that in 1970 there was a full-court press on to rid the air of pollutants that contyinues with great success to this very time.

Also if one looks at the change up to 1940 when the flurry of activity spurred by WWII put the great industrial engine into overdrive and spewed out aersol pollutants night and day for years afterward we notice that the temps dropped up to about 1980 when the effects of pollution control also became apparent on the atmosphere.

Perhaps there is a greater influence on the cooling/warming cycles we see caused by our attempts to control one bad thing and creating another “bad thing.”

Would be interesting to see how much this plays in the end game.

Didn’t know you had taken up gambling.