Four weeks of climate data:Northern Temperate Eastern Hemisphere Temperature Recap

I changed the method of accepting data for this recap. Previously, if a grid point on my map reported 75% of the time, I considered it reliable and added it to total from which the averages were taken.  I saw this was a problem in some of the very sparsely covered regions, like the Indian Ocean region that only had two islands reporting, one much warmer than the other. Today, I re-sampled the data for the Northern Temperate Zone and increased the reporting threshold to 90% of the time. This increased the temperature readings in some regions, decreased it in others, and evened the data out considerably. The number represents the difference in the median of the era 1999-2010 and the era 1955-1975. The years are chosen because all of them were strong La Niña years.


With these readings, the consensus is clear. This region, easily the most populous in the world, went up about a degree Celsius over a 56 year time span, 1955-2010. I am not certain why the second section shows so much more warming than the rest. I'll split it up into smaller parts to see if the north or the south is making the difference.

According to climatologists, the unexploded time bomb in this region is a permafrost located in Siberia, some of it in the Arctic and some in the temperate. "Perma" is relative, but this particular chunk has been ice for about 10,000 years and covers an area equal to France and Germany combined. If this melts, and it has started, the effect is not just albedo (frost reflects heat, land absorbs more) but the amount of carbon dioxide that will be released as the ice becomes water and the bubbles trapped in the ice are released into the atmosphere.

To be clear, this region is not warming at the pace of the Arctic Circle, but it is warming consistently if we look at the data from the most consistently reporting weather stations.  Later today, we will look at the numbers from the Western Hemisphere, again relying on the grid points that report at least 90% of the time.