Where did the heat go? Something significant happened to global temperatures in January. While barbs are being thrown (%26quot;one month of global cooling wiped out a century of global warming%26quot;), I find this is interesting and not from pro/anti-warming perspective.

To cool the entire globe as much as the data says requires that an immense amount of heat left the atmosphere and the surface. Where did it go? What are the processes (physics) involved?

All I can come up with is a super La Nina. It would have to be more powerful than the %26#039;98 El Nino which was huge! I%26#039;m hoping for something better than my simple conjecture.

Is there an answer with data to support it?

Has anyone actually determined where the heat went?

Additional Details

6 months ago

edit:
OK crazy, but you are just speculating, as I did. Is there data? How many BTUs or w/m2 are we talking about? How much %26quot;solar dimming%26quot; would be required to cause that much cooling that fast? Is there reason to believe that we had such a dramatic reduction in solar output?

6 months ago

Sax:
Something MIGHT have happened to the solar output in January. The real questions are, %26quot;What happened in January?%26quot; and %26quot;How do we know?%26quot; and %26quot;Is it enough to explain the cooling?%26quot;

6 months ago

J S:
I fail to see how %26quot;information about funding from Exxon-Mobil and see their spokespeople%26quot; is in any way related to the question. Got a better link?

6 months ago

To ALL:
I am not proposing that January%26#039;s temperature drop proves or disproves AGW. There is a physics question here for any who believe in the conservation of matter and energy. For the global temperature drop so fast, a lot of heat had to move somewhere.

WHERE DID THE HEAT GO?

6 months ago

Thanks for the answers. They gave me more places to look.

MY CONCLUSIONS

YEP, IT COOLED
dailytech.com referred to several sites with good info (thanks speakeasy). This site summarizes HadCRUT, GISS, UAH, and RSS data. All agree that there was a drop of about 0.6C Jan2007-Jan2008.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

NOT THE SUN
Total Solar Irradiance did nothing very interesting in the last couple of years:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_sol...

NOT REFLECTIVITY/ALBEDO
The temperature “plummeted’ for the whole year, not just the northern hemisphere winter with its extensive snow cover.

MAYBE LA NINA???
Data from NOAA for the La Nina cooling of the last year may explain some but nit all of it.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/an...

Weather Channel Founder Blasts Network; Claims It Is %26#039;Telling Us What to Think%26#039;
TWC founder and global warming skeptic advocates suing Al Gore to expose %26#039;the fraud of global warming.%26#039;
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles...

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mon...

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Other Answers (6)

• Here%26#039;s NASA Director Dr. James Hansen%26#039;s take on it:
  
  http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorg...
  %26quot;The maps are used to show that, even averaged over a month, local weather anomalies (dynamical fluctuations, more-or-less independent of forced long-term climate change) are much larger than the global mean temperature change of recent decades.1 Weather fluctuations or ‘noise’ have a noticeable effect even on monthly-mean global-mean temperature, especially in Northern Hemisphere winter. Weather has little effect on global-mean temperature averaged over several months or more. The primary cause of variations on time scales from a few months to a few years is ocean dynamics, especially the Southern Oscillation (El Nino – La Nina cycle), although an occasional large volcano can have a cooling effect that lasts a few years. The 10-11 year cycle of solar irradiance has a just barely detectable effect on global temperature, no more than about 0.1°C, much less noticeable than El Nino/La Nina fluctuations.%26quot;
• It is amazing that the whole global warming trend is a statistical number game when you come to realize that all the measuring equipment has a +/-.5 degree error and they say we have warmed up .1 degree.
  The answer has always been in the tree%26#039;s (No kidding it is called growth rings) a unbiased record that proves that it just a cyclic event.
  I just think it is funny that the GW crowd%26#039;s favorite data set is now 8 years old that proves global warming and when they start adding in the data after 1999-2007 the whole trend is lost.