My name is Bryan and I’m a recently retired meteorologist and environmental engineer with a long-time interest in all earth sciences and astronomy. Recently I have been studying climate, paleo climate, and ecology, as well as ancestral diet and health. I am not a climate expert but as I learn more about climate I will be sharing some of the more interesting things that I learn. I receive no funding for this blog and the ideas and information expressed here are my own opinions based on my own experience and collected wisdom.
I have a Bachelors Degree in Engineering Science (1974) and Masters Degree in Engineering (1979) from the University of Texas at Austin with a major in meteorology and minor in environmental health engineering. I have over 40 years of work experience in air quality and weather forecasting, analysis, monitoring, quality assurance, and data validation.
As a hobby I have tracked all of the Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms since 1963 and I have been an avid amateur photographer ever since my first camera at age seven. Some of my more interesting photos are posted here:
The cover photo is from a film negative scan of a photo I took from the top of a mountain I climbed in Colorado in May 1977.
Climate Concerns 
Good blog, Brian, I thought you were Australian with the “oz” prefix.
Thanks Keith. The “oz” is from “ozone”. For many years I forecasted ozone and particle air pollution for the State of Texas before I retired in 2015. Hence the handle “oz4caster”.
Oz
I got a reply from the help desk at the Met Office regarding Cairngorm:
“The Met Office Cairngorm Summit SIESAWS (Severe Icing Environment Semi-Automatic Weather Station) uses ultrasonic wind sensors and the reported wind is for the 10 minute period leading up to the observation.”
So now we know!
Bruce.
Thanks for the info Bruce. Confirms what I suspected, but it’s nice to have the confirmation.
Hi Brian,
I am a daily visitor of your blog and I really appreciate your data reports.
But today I am wondering: how come that your UAH update today shows a lower value for the month february 2021 relative to january 2021 while the UAH data itself shows a higher value, see:
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-february-2021-0-20-deg-c/
Greetings from The Netherlands!
Martijn,
Thanks for catching my mistake! I forgot to convert the reference baseline from 1990-2020 as reported by UAH to the 1981-2010 baseline that I am using in the graph. This adjustment changes the February temperature anomaly from +0.196C referenced to 1990-2020 into +0.357C referenced to 1981-2010. Also, in January I used a simple annual baseline adjustment with the same annual adjustment applied to every month. Just now I switched to using a separate baseline adjustment calculation for each month to be consistent with how I adjust the baseline for data from other sources. The monthly baseline adjustments range from +0.120C for December to +0.167C for September, compared to the annual adjustment of +0.137C. I have applied the monthly baseline adjustments in the now corrected the graph.
Thanks! 😉
PS. Again, I really appreciate your efforts.
Hi Brian,
Please also consider: the UAH shows a higher march 2021 value relative to the lowest 2018 monthly value but in your dataset march 2021 is below all 2018 values.
Thanks, Martijn.
Hi Martijn. Good to hear from you. What you are seeing is an artifact of my converting the 1991-2020 baseline now used by UAH to the 1981-2010 baseline that I am still using. The UAH reported value for 2021 March is -0.005C and my baseline adjustment for March is +0.128C, which yields 0.123C for the 1981-2010 baseline. The UAH lowest reported value for 2018 is -0.033C for September. My baseline adjustment for September is +0.167C, which yields 0.134C when adjusted to the 1981-2010 baseline and is thus higher than the adjusted March 2021 value.
If you haven’t seen it already, I discussed how changing baselines can alter seasonal patterns here (using daily rather than monthly data):
Yes it makes sense, thanks for your explanation.
Greetings from The Netherlands!
Hi Bryan,
thanks for your website with nice charts.
I read that you wonder why artic temperature is rising fast and antarctica is falling a bit. Perhaps this visualisation solves the mystery: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4949
Southern and northern hemisphere are not connected that much by air circulation than we think. The north-south temperature transport system are the oceans. These are slow and deep.
Thus I think it takes a longer time to heat the global south by northern emissions. The north is going to suffer from own emissions in a very short time period.
Greetings from germany!
Daniel
Daniel, thanks for your comment. Yes I’m familiar with lots of arguments about both the Arctic and Antarctic. Currently, my thinking is that ocean currents and related cloud cover probably play a dominant role in polar climate oscillations over periods of several decades. I am still skeptical that CO2 plays much of a role, but time will tell. If it is ocean currents and cloud cover, then we may see a reversal in the Arctic warming trend within the next decade, despite continued increasing CO2 levels. There is already evidence that temperature and sea ice in the Arctic have stabilized over the last 5-10 years now.