Severe tests

Tags

review

There’s an interesting article by Joel Katzav looking at climate model testing from a sort of Poppery “severe-testy” point of view. It’s here in EOS. It pops up from time to time in various places.

November 2015

Globally speaking, November was a warm month, at least for a November. GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp and HadCRUT4 all have November as the warmest November on record nominally. Part of the warmth, at least the part that distinguishes it form 2014, say, is likely due to the El Nino that matured mid-year. There are various estimates of the effect that El Nino has on monthly temperatures (directly because the El Nino region is rather large and part of the surface and indirectly because El Nino warms other areas with some lag) but are around a tenth of a degree or so.

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December 2015

December 2015 was the last month of 2015. It had 31 days. December was also an unusually warm December, globally. The temperature anomaly in December was the highest recorded by some margin. In the NOAAGlobalTemp analysis the margin was 0.29degC. In HadCRUT4, it was around 0.31degC. Uncertainties in monthly values are typically larger than they are for annual values, but even so, the margin is significant in so far as the 95% uncertainty ranges for this December and the previous record holder don’t overlap.