cc: "Folland, Chris" , Phil Jones , Richard W Reynolds , Gavin Schmidt , Stefan Rahmstorf date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:01:29 -0400 from: Michael Mann subject: Re: heads up to: "Thomas.R.Karl" thanks Tom--yeah, the ARGO floats are a problem and almost certainly contribute artificially to the downturn, though much of it is certainly real (La Nina). The thing that is somewhat disturbing is that the UK Met Office essentially pads the Jan/Feb (anomalously cool) average out 10+ years if I understand what's been done, before the smoothing is applied. this presents a very misleading view of the recent trend, and is being quite predictably seized upon by contrarians. especially problematic is the fact that it plays right into the bogus "global warming and stopped" mantra. they are of course aided here by the fact that the UK Met Office is an unimpeachable source--Chris, I think this needs some attention (if you're back from travels?) I've copied in Stefan and Gavin who brought the issue to my attention in the first place. cheers, mike Thomas.R.Karl wrote: Mike -- check our web site -- Jan and Feb of 2008. La Nina dominated short term fluctuation. in my view. Note land temps. Also have spoken to Dick R. We know there is a cool bias in the SST because of the ARGO floats --- I hope Dick can begin to break out anomalies w/r to independent data streams. Tom [1]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/cmb-prod-global-2008.html Tom Michael Mann said the following on 3/26/2008 7:18 AM: Hi Chris (and Tom and Phil), I hope you're all doing well. Just wanted to give you a heads up on something. Have you seen this? [2]http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual_s21.png apparently the contrarians are having a field day w/ this graph. My understanding that it is based on using only Jan+Feb 08 and padding w/ that final value. Surely this can't be?? Is Fred Singer now running the UK Met Office website? Would appreciate any info you can provide, mike -- Dr. Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D. Director NOAA's National Climatic Data Center Veach-Baley Federal Building 151 Patton Avenue Asheville, NC 28801-5001 Tel: (828) 271-4476 Fax: (828) 271-4246 [3]Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov -- Michael E. Mann Associate Professor Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) 863-4075 503 Walker Building FAX: (814) 865-3663 The Pennsylvania State University email: [4]mann@psu.edu University Park, PA 16802-5013 [5]http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/mann.htm