A mixed up month behind the times and anomalous anomalies @wattsupwiththat

There's distinctly odd article at WUWT right now (archived here). Anthony Watts is showing off. He's saying how he knows what the NOAA will be releasing tomorrow. He wrote:

Thanks partly to NOAA’s new adjusted dataset, tommorrow (sic) they’ll claim to reporters that May was the ‘hottest ever’

May? Well that isn't likely to be what the NOAA will announce tomorrow (US time). If they announce anything it will be what the June data shows. The NOAA announced the report for May 2015 a month ago, it was published on 18 June. (The next global report is due on 20 July, with a press briefing on 16 July. Here is a link to the briefing held in June.)

Actually, Anonymous points out that Anthony's big announcement will be the climate report for 2014. His note even says as much:

This is what is being sent out today:
“
NOAA to Announce Key Climate Findings: Learn more about the temperature, precipitation and weather events experienced around the world in 2014, tomorrow at 11 am EDT. Dial 1-888-989-9791 with the password “Climate” to join the call and view the slides here (available at 10:30 am EDT).

The really weird part about all of this, is that in the very same article, Anthony copied one of his headlines from back in June. His headline and the first few lines were:

NOAA Releases New Pause-Buster Global Surface Temperature Data and Immediately Claims Record-High Temps for May 2015 – What a Surprise!

NOAA recently published their State of the Climate Report for May 2015. Under the heading of Global Summary Information, they note:

His main headline can't have been a misprint, because Anthony goes on and on about what the May 2015 report is going to show and how he bets that "AP’s Seth Borenstein (and others) will eat that right up and that global image they are pushing will be seen in news world-wide". (He didn't report it.) Reading Anthony's article is a surreal experience. Is it just me, or do you agree?

Anomalous anomalies and different baselines

Anyway, let's just say young Anthony is having a senior's moment. We'll put that to one side. What about the rest. For one thing, he decided to compare the lower troposphere with the surface. He wrote:

So for May 2015 NOAA says the globe is at 0.87°C above normal, and UAH says the globe is at 0.27°C above normal –  a difference by a factor of three.

This time he failed to recognise that:

• It makes no sense to talk about factors of three when discussing temperature like that. If the temperature here is 23C and there is 20C and the baseline is 20C, therefore the anomaly here is 3C and there is 0c - does that mean that here is infinitely different to there?
• The baseline for NOAA's 0.87C is the twentieth century, whereas for UAH it's 1981-2010! Anthony still doesn't know his baselines from his anomalies :) (See also here and here where Anthony struggles with temperature baselines and anomalies)
• Anthony might live in the clouds. The rest of us live on the surface.

Anthony Watts is confused by sea surface temperatures

Could anything else go wrong for him? Yes. Anthony still thinks that NOAA's sea surface temperatures are wrong because of something to do with night time marine temperatures. (NOAA used these temperatures to correct for bias in ship data.) Anthony doesn't know a lot about surface temperature, despite what he would have you believe. Nick Stokes pointed out this error, writing at WUWT some time ago:

June 11, 2015 at 2:46 am
“The intent of this letter to present when and how the new NOAA sea surface temperature data differ during the hiatus from the night marine air temperature data, upon which it is based.”

Bob, it doesn’t help to start such a missive with a totally wrong assertion. NOAA SST data is not based on NMAT. That is why it is called SST, and why there is such fuss about buckets, engine intakes, buoys etc. Nor is it a reference. It may be a point of comparison. A problem with NMAT is the sparsity of data. It’s a puzzle, because I presume you know all this. So Fig 1 will fall flat.

Bob subsequently corrected his article, but Anthony's mind got stuck in Bob's initial error.

Nobody noticed

Is there anything else odd about this? Yes, there is. So far no-one has remarked on Anthony claiming that the NOAA is about to release the May temperature report, instead of the June one. Or the strangely mixed up article he wrote, in which he appeared to be talking about a future May 2015 report, at the same time as talking about a previous May 2015 report.

All sea surface temperatures for May were the hottest May on record

Oh, and yes, May was the hottest May ever in the NOAA record. And for all Anthony's trying to persuade his readers that the seas weren't really very hot, I've put together charts of sea surface temperatures - ERSSTv4, for HadSST1 and Reynolds OI v2. They differ from each other, but for all of them, May was the hottest on record. NOTE: The charts are just for the month of May each year - not the annual average.

May data only. Data source: KNMI Climate Explorer

And it was by far the hottest May on record for HadCRUT4 (global land and sea surface).  Again the chart is only for the month of May each year - not the annual average.

Data source: UK Met Office

GISTemp was the odd one out this time, where May was equal second. (I wouldn't be surprised if it was revised when the new data comes out this month - maybe some data was missing?)

From the WUWT comments

The first three comments were arguing that not everything on Earth has died yet so there's no need for panic:

Anachronda  July 15, 2015 at 7:23 am
“Land: +2.30 degrees F”
So… we can stop worrying about how a two degree increase is going to kill everything?

Anthony Watts  July 15, 2015 at 7:28 am
Good point, I’ll add that.

deebodk  July 15, 2015 at 7:56 am
“Well, it would seem so. But, 2F is not 2C. 2.30F works out to 1.27C.”
Even a 2C increase won’t kill everything.

M Courtney says that water sloshing about overwhelms the greenhouse effect (huh?)

July 15, 2015 at 7:25 am
NOAA is looking at the Oceans and UAH is looking where the effects of CO2 are manifest – in the air.
So why not believe them both? It just means that natural variation (water sloshing about) overwhelms the greenhouse effect.
As water has a far higher thermal capacity than air it’s what anyone with secondary school physics would expect.

Mumbles McGuirck is delighted to get the May report in July:

 July 15, 2015 at 7:31 am
Thanks for the “heads up.” Usually these press releases are dropped like a bomb on the science community, so if some enterprising reporter were to actually look for contrary commentary, any skeptics would be caught short. Forewarned is forearmed.

Owen is easily fooled. He thinks all the world is wrong except Anthony Watts:

July 15, 2015 at 7:58 am
The divergence between the cooked data and the reality on the ground is becoming ridiculous. Eventually the cold hard facts of real weather/climate will overcome the mindless propaganda being spouted by NOAA and the rest of the Climate Lying establishment. People will finally wake up and realize they are being lied too.