Dead Heat

For those who are waiting for a review of the recent work on MSU temperature estimates, it’s coming. But it turns out to be a rather complex subject, with many papers to review and a lot of data to examine, so it’ll take a bit longer. In the meantime, the NASA GISS year-end estimates of monthly average temperature have been released, so let’s take a look. GISS provides monthly average temperature data from 1880 to the present for four areas: the land+sea (the globe), land, northern hemisphere land, and southern hemisphere land. The most oft-referenced data, which represent land and ocean for the entire planet, are the “globe” (land+sea) numbers.