Four weeks of climate data: Southern Tropics Region #2

This region is smaller than other slices of the Southern Tropics, but it is interesting nonetheless. El Niño/La Niña is important over a vast stretch of the world, but here almost more than anywhere. The varying temperature expanse of water stretches out across the Indian and Pacific Oceans but is somewhat larger in the Indian, so this region with as few people as possible and adjacent to this huge cause of what we look at as the randomness of climate gives us a pretty good idea what would be happening if people were out of the equation.

 

As you can see, there are three grid points out of a possible 100 feeding us equally consistent data for all 56 years. The lower left point is probably Rodriguez and the point at the right is likely Diego Garcia. I am not sure what island the other weather station represents.

Summer, which is the Southern Hemisphere starts just before Chirstmas, shows a warming trend. If not for the record warn Summer in the late 1990s, every metric would show warming that is slowing down.

The Fall looks much like Summer, except cooler and slightly flatter increases.

If you are not certain what I mean when I say "warming but slowing down", Winter in this region is the perfect example.  Every step from left to right is a step up, but every step is less steep than the one before it when reading from left to right.

Spring, like Summer and Fall, has one peak in the late 1990s that keeps from being warming in every trend.

Confidence of the region warming: 99.999%
Confidence of decreasing rate: 99.9%
Change in median temperature from the 1955-1975 interval to the 1999-2010 interval: 0.66° C


I would argue that this region, as small as it is, tells us what the world would be doing if it didn't have a species that was clever enough to burn the world to keep itself warm, and in the 20th Century showed that it is clever enough to keep itself cool. (Air conditioning.)  The world would likely be warming, the rate would be slowing down and at least over the water, the rate would be going up about 1% of a degree Celsius per year, maybe a little less in regions that aren't in the middle of El Niño/La Niña Central.

Tomorrow morning, we look at Indonesia, New Guinea and tropical Australia.