One of the fastest Arctic sea ice growths on record!

The Arctic sea ice extent reached a minimum a few days ago, to much consternation as usual at WUWT (here and here and here). Deniers don't much like reports about sea ice. It's a difficult measure for them. When there are open seas in the Arctic it's a stark reminder of just how much we are affecting the climate.

Below is a chart of Arctic sea ice extent, comparing 2016 ice extent to the average of recent decades and to the years 2007, 2012 and last year. This chart is from the National Institute of Polar Research. Click to view enlarged.

Figure 1 | Arctic sea ice extent for 2016, 2015, 2012 and 2007. Source: National Institute of Polar Research

Deniers against nature at WUWT with Andy May

Anthony Watts has posted a puff piece at WUWT (archived here). In it Andy May says how he wants a world without nature, or at least that's the subtext. What puzzles me is what on earth is it that deniers find so enticing about ridding the world of the abundance of amazing, wondrous flora and fauna? What is it that makes people so irate about having to share the planet with other species?

Andy May likes science fiction. He wrote about how fiction writer Michael Crichton was 'a wonderful writer'. Yes, he could write a compelling yarn, but why Andy prefers Crichton pseudo-science to real science remains a mystery. I guess that the only thing deniers have on their "side" is fiction.

Come and join HotWhopper Chat

There are oodles of weather discussion boards, and lots of climate blogs, and some people like Facebook and Twitter. However there aren't too many options for people who aren't bloggers but who occasionally want to write something about climate change at the time they think of it, and chat about it with other people.

HotWhopper Chat was conceived as a place where people with a common interest in climate change can develop a real sense of community - a climate community, that they can own. A place where everyone can feel welcome, from scientist to complete climate newbie.

So come and join in the discussions.

Crikey! Hottest August on record - vies with July for hottest month ever

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for August was 0.98 °C, which is 0.16 °C higher than the previous hottest August in 2014.

Because July is the hottest month of the year, I've seen this July reported as the hottest month ever in recorded history! I asked the question whether August beat July and was told it's too close to call.

The average for the eight months to the end of August is 1.05 °C, which is 0.25 °C higher than any previous January to August period. The previous highest was last year, which with the latest data had an anomaly of 0.8 °C.

There are now eleven in a row of "hottest months" from October 2015 to August 2016 (that is, hottest October, hottest November etc). If we could look back over the entire Holocene, it's probably more than 7,000 years since there was a similar run of hottest months on record, that is, not since the Holocene climatic optimum (it's probably hotter now than it was back then).

Here is a chart of the average of 12 months to August each year. The 12 months to August 2016 averaged 1.03 °C above the 1951-1980 mean and was 0.23 °C hotter than the 12 months to August 2015:

Figure 1 | Global mean surface temperature anomaly for the 12 months to August each year. The base period is 1951-1980. Data source: GISS NASA

Troposphere temperatures for August 2016

The troposphere temperatures for August 2016 have been released. The lower troposphere is recorded in UAH v6 beta 5 and RSS TLT v3.3. This report also covers RSS TTT for the troposphere (without the "lower") and follows pretty much the same format as previous monthly updates.

In all records, the August global anomaly was higher than it was in July but lower than earlier this year as El Niño is now over.

For RSS TTT (troposphere), last month was the hottest August on record. For 2016 to be colder than the previous hottest year (1998), the troposphere would have to average less than 0.19 °C for the remaining months.

In the lower troposphere (UAH beta v6.05) last month is the second hottest August on record, lower than it was in 1998. For 1998 to remain the hottest year in the UAH lower troposphere record, the average for the next four months would need to be below 0.32 °C.

Weather Reality Check: What a La Niña looks like...in pictures

The wacky conspiracy theorists at WUWT think that every nation who watches and warns about ENSO events, so that farmers and fishers can plan ahead, are hiding reality from deniers. They seem to think that it helps weather reporting agencies maintain the "climate hoax" conspiracy to say there's probably not going to be a La Niña this year after all, so that when the temperature plunges to new lows just short of an ice age in a few weeks (as deniers seem to think) ...well, I don't know what conspiracy theorists think the weather bureaux will do then ...

Losing his grip on ENSO: Bob Tisdale thinks he's an expert, and yet...

Bob Tisdale fancies himself as an ENSO expert, yet he doesn't show that in his WUWT article today (archived here). He's complaining that a couple of days ago NOAA removed the "watch" status for La Nina. Bob's headline was "NOAA Cancels La Niña Watch While La Niña Conditions Exist". Well, he seems to be the only person who thinks La Nina conditions exist. Oh, except maybe for Anthony Watts who, way back in June, declared that we are already having a La Nina.

Today Bob Tisdale wrote:

Regardless of the existing (and strengthening) La Niña conditions, NOAA has canceled its La Niña Watch, which had been in effect since April.

Except there are not conditions currently existing for La Nina. Bob's wrong. This is where he was wrong - almost everywhere:

1. Bob didn't base his assessment on the ENSO definition's standard of the ONI, which is a 3 month running mean;
2. He based his current sea surface temperature anomaly in the Nino 3.4 region on the wrong average baseline, making it appear approx 0.4 C colder than it is (the cutoff is -0.5 C) (h/t Rattus Norvegicus);
3. He used the wrong dataset (Reynolds OI v2), not the one used as standard for ENSO estimates (ERSST v4).

Summary added by Sou 4:57 pm 10 September 2016

Bob Fernley-Jones' fixation on hot Marches toward coral bleaching

There are some things associated with climate change that seem to upset deniers more than others. Deniers don't care much about killer heat waves, record floods or major long-lasting drought. They do seem to get upset by reports of coral bleaching. Today there was an article at WUWT by some denier called Bob Fernley-Jones (archived here). Bob was writing about an article at The Conversation published more than four months ago, on April 29, 2016.

The article was about the extraordinarily hot temperatures in the Coral Sea in March this year. Here's the chart that was shown in the article, which I've copied directly from the Bureau of Meteorology:

Figure 1 | March temperature for the Coral Sea. Source: Bureau of Meteorology.

Lordy! Christopher Monckton's miracle - there never were and never will be any ice ages!

In case you missed it, Christopher Monckton has been writing a series of articles proving beyond a shadow of doubt that the earth has never slipped between glacial and interglacial conditions. He's now up to Part 3 (archived here) of who-knows-how-many-parts in the series.

One thing that stands out is that in his Part 3, Christopher ignored corrections people made to his multiple errors in his previous (Part 1 and Part 2) articles.

There were more than 300 comments on Christopher's Part 2, so he just must be right :)

Dissenting view on Climate Change Action - No longer silent, but is it too little, too few, and too late?

Two members of Australia's Climate Change Authority have published a minority report, dissenting from a new report from the Authority.

Unlike the Climate Commission, the The Climate Change Authority (CCA) wasn't shut down when Tony Abbott became Australia's Prime Minister in September 2013. Instead it was left to all but disintegrate, with budget cuts and no filling of board vacancies until Turnbull took over as Prime Minister in September 2015 (half the board seats were vacant - 5 out of 10, for most of those two years). [Update: see article by Clive Hamilton and an article on the resignation from CCA of former Reserve Bank Chair Bernie Fraser, for more on this subject. Sou 6 Sept 16] The CCA was set up as an independent statutory body, or as independent as a government body can get these days, which isn't much. It's been a toothless tiger struggling along with occasional mostly wimpy reports promoted by government when it suits them, and buried when it doesn't.

The members of the Authority (ie the board) include Clive Hamilton, John Quiggin and David Karoly who were all appointed under the Labor Government in 2012. In the past, these three people were prominent advocates for climate action, and were willing to speak out fearlessly. They've been much quieter since they were appointed to the CCA. It's now six years since Clive Hamilton's book "Requiem for a Species". (Update: It's not as bad as I thought. See comment from MikeH below to articles by Clive Hamilton. Sou 6 Sept 16)