A day when we rightly remember the sacrifices made in defeating fascism and lives lost in all wars, especially the two world wars of the 20th century.
But this year, of all years, we should remember the causes of the wars, when Europe was a continent of individual nation states, and nations elected leaders blaming all their woes on the establishment and scapegoats - pledging to make them great again.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
A brief rundown of state of play for 2016, including all data up to September and most of the satellite date for October.
Note that the official UAH data has not been updated yet, so I'm using the figure for UAH beta 6 announced by Dr Roy Spencer.
Temperatures for 2016. Anomalies based on 1981 - 2010.
Small drops for UAH beta 6 and RSS 4.0 TTT, but a much bigger drop for RSS 3.3.
How does this change the probabilities (based on a simple linear regression)?
Probability of each dataset setting a record for 2016.
Surprisingly, despite the big drop in RSS 3.3 temperatures the probability of a record remains unchanged at 96%.
The probability of UAH beta 6 beating 1998 has increased slightly to 76%.
HadCRUT also increased its chances in September, up to 99%.
Details
RSS 3.3
Comparison of 2016 to 1998 for RSS 3.3
The dashed line shows the average temperature needed in the last two months for 2016 to equal 1998.
Despite the big drop in October the year to October for RSS 3.3 is still warmer in 2016 than it was in 1998 (by about 0.015 °C).
RSS can be colder than 1998 for the rest of the year and still beat the record, but note it has been below 1998 for most of the last few months.
UAH beta 6
Comparison of 2016 to 1998 for UAH beta 6
In contrast to RSS, UAH beta 6 is slightly below the 1998 average up to October (by 0.006 °C),
so it will need to be warmer over the next two months to set a new record.
The last two months have been almost identical to their 1998 counterparts, and if this continues for the next two months it could be a very close result.
Disclaimer
As always the calculations of probability are based on a very simplistic linear regression and I do not necessarily agree with the figures.
Also setting a record does not tell as very much about the state of global warming, and not setting a record tells us much less.
Finally I'm concentrating on RSS 3.3 and UAH beta 6 because they are the sets least likely to set a record (and therefore most interesting), but this might also indicate they are the least reliable sets -
aside from possible questions about satellite data in general, UAH beta 6 is still unpublished and RSS 3.3 is being replaced.
