February 2019 Global Temperature Update

Another brief summary of all the main global temperature data sets for February 2019. As before all anomalies have been recalculated to be relative to the 1981-2010 base period, which may mean that relative changes are different.

February was another month with little change. All data sets show the average temperature as being somewhat warmer than the base period, with anomalies around one third to a half a degree warmer. This is similar to the anomaly for January in most cases, but with HadCRUT and NOAA being around 0.1°C cooler. Compared with last February all data sets show this February being warmer, by around 0.1°C.

February

Dataset	Anomaly	Change from Last Month	Change from Last Year	Trend Since 1979 (per Century)
BEST	0.45	0.02	0.06	1.87
GISS	0.45	0.03	0.08	1.73
HADC	0.33	-0.09	0.14	1.7
NOAA	0.32	-0.11	0.09	1.63
RSS4	0.51	-0.01	0.16	1.98
UAH6	0.36	-0.01	0.16	1.28

February 2019 was between the 3rd and 6th warmest February depending on the data set. Here a couple of graphs showing temperatures for the month of February. (Note the scale for GISTEMP is to the 1951-1980 average.)

Predictions

With not much change in the monthly anomalies, and these being close to the warming trend, there hasn't been much change in my predictions. The mid point prediction is virtually unchanged, at most down a few hundredths of a degree. All sets are suggesting there is a good chance of 2019 being warmer than 2018, but with only a small chance of being warmest. The biggest changes from last month is that all sets have reduced the probability of an absolute warmest year, simply because of the slightly narrower prediction intervals.

January - Predictions

Dataset	Prediction	Interval	Top 5	Warmer Than 2018	Record Warmest
BEST	0.44	±0.13	97.0%	71.0%	2.0%
GISS	0.44	±0.13	97.5%	71.1%	2.4%
HADC	0.40	±0.14	95.3%	92.8%	7.5%
NOAA	0.41	±0.12	94.9%	84.1%	5.3%
RSS4	0.50	±0.14	80.2%	95.8%	2.5%
UAH6	0.32	±0.14	76.0%	91.3%	0.4%

A few graphs.

Final Observation

The fact that February was so warm might have came a shock to those who had been a very cold February, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Here for example is an article on Watts Up With That, Amid the dimmest Sun since 1978 – a month without sunspots, from the 1st March claiming low sunspot numbers were causing severe winters.

It seems the sun has dimmed more than the usual amount at the end of solar cycle 24, and it could be a factor in the severe winter we are experiencing in many parts of the northern hemisphere.

But of course, cold winters in parts of the USA do not mean cold everywhere. Some parts of the Northern Hemisphere, such as the UK, were experiencing extremely warm, even record breaking, temperatures during parts of February, and even some parts of the USA, such as Florida, were very hot.

So strong was the conviction that February was going to be cold that when the UAH data was published in WUWT, here, showing Northern Hemisphere temperatures were 0.46°C above average, the comments erupted in accusations about the unreliability of satellite data, some even suggesting fraud and corruption. For example

Sorry, but this presentation does not pass the BS smell test. The northern hemisphere was featured in story after story about cold records, snow records, lake ice jams, etc, and in the southern hemisphere (where I live) producers are struggling with a decent harvest, which does not suggest a normal summer temperature. This all just does not add up to believable. Can somebody familiar with the data sets figure out what is wrong? Otherwise, I’m going with the obvious: BS!

Ron Long

How is this thing supposed to be measuring temperature? This is for the month of Feb, right?

We have had almost the coldest Feb on record…..we’re 61F right now….when we should be high 70’s to low 80’s

…and it says we’re +2 for the month

Something is definitely wrong…..

Latitude

Que the usual apologist clergy to lie away the discrepancy.

This is why the contrarians here who constantly defend the constant adjustments and lie about temperature are lying liars who deserve no respect and no polite interaction. Denver Colorado was disastrously cold this year, significantly below average. This is pure Orwellian horse crap

Matthew Drobnick

It's all a long time (About 4 years) from the time when anyone who questioned the accuracy of satellite data was branded a satellite-denier.

And next months data from UAH is using an adjusted version showing slightly more warming.