[arnie]

It's been a while since I posed something about this topic. But I just saw that the British HadCRUT global temperature data set (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/) was updated with the global land ocean surface temperature anomalie for Nov. '12: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temper...rut3gl.txt

The HadCRUT data set is believed to be the most reliable, and correct none-satellite data set (NASA's GISS for example, is NOT).

So with the 2nd to last month of the year 2012 on the record, we can start to say something meaningful about 2012's overall average temperature, longer term trends etc.

How does 2012 compare to the past 5, 10, 15 and 20 years?
If we leave Dec blank, then 2012 ends up with an anomalie of 0.417C. If we fill in the highest Dec temp on record (0.523) it will be 0.427. If we fill in the lowest (-0.818) it will be 0.314. Hence, it is rather safe to assume that 2012 will end up between 0.417 and 0.427C on average.
That would make it the 3rd warmest year over the past 5 years
That would make it the 6th warmest (or 4th coldest) year of the past 10 years (6 years: 2005, 10, 3, 4, 9 and 6 were warmer)
That would make it the 9th warmest (or 7th coldest) year of the past 15 years
That would make it the 9th warmest (or the 12th coldest) year of the past 20 years.

On an annual basis, 2012 wasn't a record year. It was more on the cold side for the past 10 years, smack middle for the past 5 years, below average for the past 15 years, and just made it into the top 10 of the past 20 years. All in all, nothing special, not much warmer, not much colder than the past 20 years... (while CO2 levels are now data-record high...)

How would that look like if we plot these monthly values? The y-axe show the temp. anomalies, the x-axe time. The red linear regression line is for all data over the past 20 years, the green line for the past 15 years and the blue for the past 10 years. As you can see, the globe has been cooling over the past 10 years. Has remained warm over the past 15 years but not getting any warmer or colder (flatlined) over the past 15 years, and only when we look 20 years back has it been getting warmER. This means that all global warming has occurred more than 15 years ago and has now stopped. Which is interesting since CO2 levels continue to increase and in fact are now almost 10% higher than they were 20 years ago. What we see here are natural cycles at work, from ENSO to solar, to PDO, AMO etc etc. Most likely most are ocean related, since the atmosphere responds to the ocean and not the other way around.

Given the current development in the ENSO 3.4 region (defines el nino or la nina), the current "la nada" (neutral) state of the equatorial pacific ocean and decreasing trend in sea surface temperatures in that region, I'd be hard pressed to see the temp. anomalie for Dec. '12 coming in above that of Nov. '12, further lowering the 2012 average temp. though only slightly and not affecting this count by much.

Regardless, the conclusion is that over the past 10 years the globe has gotten colder (which is contrary to what you will read in the media, but folks this is the real data! this is what defines global warming or not), has remaind warm (but NOT warmER) over the past 15 years, and we now have to go back more than 15 years in time to detect any form of warmING...

Next year's ENSO cycle (neutral, la nino or el nino) will determine the globe's temperature fate.
N: more stable temperatures
LN: continued lower temperatures
EN:decreasing trend may reverse.

So not only will 2013 be very important for the markets, it will also be very important for the global warming theory. Maybe those Mayan's were onto something when they predicted the end of the world (as we know it)