After months of anticipation the global warming alarmist community dolefully (gleefully?) reported that a new record high annual average surface temperature for the globe was observed in 2014. According to the believers, this new milestone in global average temperature was a record in the modern period, i.e., since 1880, and more evidence, as if any were needed, of the inexorable rise of the earth’s temperature due to human activity.

Whenever some hapless doubter, after a cool summer or a frigid winter, dares to query the legitimacy of the whole anthropogenic climate change theory, they are immediately advised that such variation is “just weather.” For example, in the winter of 2013-14 ice cover in the Great Lakes at 88.3% was the fourth highest it has been since 1973 and not far off the record of 94.7% set in 1979, according to Environment Canada. That agency was quick to note that:

A season of unusually cold weather in the Great Lakes basin is not a sign that the century long trend of rising temperatures has reversed. In fact, while Canada and the eastern U.S. froze at times this winter, many locations including Alaska and Europe, were experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures.

Fair enough, and great to see the scientists at Environment Canada were able to slip the muzzle long enough to get that comment published on their website.

With this perspective in mind, we must surely be able to assume that the new record global average temperature is not merely some variation due to weather, but a troubling shift in an already unsettling trend. The new record was announced by both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in the US.

According to the NOAA website the global average surface temperature (land areas and oceans combined) was 0.02ºC above the previous high recorded in 2005 and 2010. That’s right, 2/100ths of a degree warmer. Their error bounds are multiples of that value which means this result is not statistically significant, i.e., 2014 was not meaningfully different from 2005 or 2010 and the change could simply be due to accumulated errors in the reporting and calculation of the value. But, it’s a new record, and it supports the scary narrative so, hey, let’s get it out there.

NASA, on its website, noted:

The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000. This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet, according to an analysis of surface temperature measurements by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

That statement, while factually correct, is a little misleading. Depending on your start and end points, you may get a long-term warming trend, or no trend at all. As NASA observes, the ten warmest years in the modern temperature record, with the exception of 1998, have occurred since 2000. But since at least 2000 there has been no trend, as this latest result confirms. Global average temperature has not risen for over a decade, no matter the spin put on the observational record by these agencies.

Meanwhile, the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere since 2007 has risen from an average of about 370 parts per million (ppm) to around 400 ppm, an increase of approximately 8% and still rising. The climate change models, which give dimension to the ‘threat’ posed by the ever-increasing level of CO₂ and are critical to the narrative, all over-estimate the temperature response to that rise. This probably explains in part, the eagerness with which this new ‘record’ was released. Without a meaningful increase in temperature soon, support for the entire enterprise might begin to wane as the discrepancy between actual temperatures and forecast temperatures increases. Already, the gap raises serious questions about the validity and usefulness of the models and that introduces a lot of uncertainty about what an appropriate policy response looks like.

To its credit, NOAA also reports that while the surface temperature observations remain high (a 2/100ths of a degree record, let’s not forget) the satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature did not deliver a similar result. There are two main analytical datasets used to assess satellite measurements, one produced by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and another produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). They use slightly different methods and so UAH found that 2014 was the third warmest year for the lower- and mid-troposphere and RSS found it was the sixth warmest for the same atmospheric zones. UAH measurements extend from 1979 forward and RSS’s extend from 1981. Both found that 2014 average temperature in the stratosphere was the 13^th warmest since satellite measurement began.

According to NOAA:

The stratospheric temperature is decreasing on average while the lower and middle troposphere temperatures are increasing on average, consistent with expectations in a greenhouse-warmed world.

Well, maybe, but what is missing from that statement is NOAA’s own uncertainty with respect to temperature changes in the stratosphere. NOAA is a participant in an ongoing study of stratospheric temperature that hopes to resolve unexpected results from the analysis of satellite temperature observations. On their website they reference an article, “The mystery of recent stratospheric temperature trends”, published in Nature in 2012, the abstract of which reads as follows:

A new data set of middle- and upper-stratospheric temperatures based on reprocessing of satellite radiances provides a view of stratospheric climate change during the period 1979–2005 that is strikingly different from that provided by earlier data sets. The new data call into question our understanding of observed stratospheric temperature trends and our ability to test simulations of the stratospheric response to emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances. Here we highlight the important issues raised by the new data and suggest how the climate science community can resolve them.

The “mystery” referenced in the title of the Nature article is that from about 1995 forward there is no trend – not up or down, just flat and strangely similar to surface temperature results over roughly the same period. Not so cut and dried then, but certainly something worth exploring. Perhaps someone at NOAA should brief the PR team.

Finally, it’s also interesting to consider NOAA’s comments on sea ice extent. Rapidly melting polar sea ice is a much-vaunted marker of a warming planet.

Recent polar sea ice extent trends continued in 2014. The average annual sea ice extent in the Arctic was 10.99 million square miles, the sixth smallest annual value of the 36-year period of record. The annual Antarctic sea ice extent was record large for the second consecutive year, at 13.08 million square miles.

Seems odd that you’d lead with the “sixth smallest” and wind up with “record large” considering that the record Antarctic sea ice extent in 2014 was more than two standard deviations from the mean – statistically very significant – while a 2/100ths of a degree change in surface temperature – which most assuredly is not statistically significant – is worthy of a global press release.

The 2014 temperature ‘record’ is pretty small beer, but sufficient it seems to keep the whole climate change juggernaut rolling.