cc: Andrew Revkin , trenbert@ucar.edu, tom.delworth@noaa.gov, broccoli@envsci.rutgers.edu, cwunsch@ocean.mit.edu, rcurry@whoi.edu, jseveringhaus@ucsd.edu, shs@stanford.edu date: Wed Apr 30 13:00:04 2008 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: nature paper / ocean model as short-term regional climate to: Stefan Rahmstorf Stefan, Andy, In our land-only data the NH was the warmest ever in March, so for land-only NH the figure for 2008 so far is barely down on previous years. The map for March 08 is on our web site, the HC and also on the GISS site. It is just a month. It is useful to look at Jan and March 08 in the context of Eurasian snow cover. [1]http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/ For Eurasia Jan08 was a record high coverage, whereas March 08 was a record low coverage. During Feb an awful lot of snow area disappeared. It is just a couple of months, though. The oceans around the world are still relatively cool. At least March should stop the stupid op-ed pieces about the coming Ice Age and the 2007/2008 cooling which is just a La Nina response. Some La Nina's (and some El Nino's) seem to have a bigger effect on large-scale temps than others. One day I might get some time to figure out why! Cheers Phil At 10:53 30/04/2008, Stefan Rahmstorf wrote: Hi Phil and Andy, re the "slowdown in warming" question - perhaps it is remarkable that we had the warmest March on record over land, and one of the warmest overall (I think ranked second or third depending on the data set), despite La Niņa conditions and a minimum of the 11-year solar cycle - two of the main things thought to cause wiggles around the overall warming trend. What do you think, Phil? The common question "do you believe in climate change" is an expression of the fact that most lay people still think that this issue is hotly debated amongst climatologists, thanks to the skeptics nonsense articles that keep appearing in the media. So first in the conversation they want to find out what "camp" you are in. A very sensible social strategy, since it helps them to not offend you. Cheers, Stefan -- Stefan Rahmstorf [2]www.ozean-klima.de [3]www.realclimate.org Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------