Hi Jennifer,
I’m writing a note about a bizarre end of summer storm event that hit drought affected Canberra late Tuesday evening. To some extent the whole thing went right over my head but I recall hastily pulling out internet and power connections then rounding up pets as lightening developed around my place. It passed quickly but next day there was still chaos in our city nearby.
Read about “The Storm of the Decade” here, http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=general&story_id=561581&category=General.
For a while I have been most interested in what we now call “supercell” activity and I wrote another note on the Licloa event to a local political advisor on Tuesday afternoon thinking we must get used to a higher frequency of these spectacular but very dangerous events as our seas around Bass Strait warm.
Regards,
Gavin
In Canberra, Australia
NOAA - 1984-1993 !
"a new satellite-only climatology (for 1984-1993) became available and made it possible to generate more accurate SST anomaly products from the operational 50-km daily SST field"
BoM is a trend map not an anomaly. It's a linear trend for the time specified from the data sets specified.
You may think that using the Mercator is to mislead but it's simply a popular representation for much of the world. Most people are looking more at changes than absolutes. e.g El Nino
You will notice NOAA also produce polar stereographic map projection products. Actually a bloody enormous range of stuff.
http://www2.ncdc.noaa.gov/docs/podug/html/c5/sec5-0.htm#t50-3
Sorry Luke, I have already checked both of these links and they don't tell us the base point of reference. All we have is data in space that tells us that such and such pixel is 2 degrees warmer but there is no indication of "warmer than what year/decade/long term mean"
There is no need for you to take it personally but in my view any representation of anomalies that uses the old Mercator projection is trying to mislead because of the exagerated polar scale. This is especially the case when one is trying to compare the area of warming with the area of cooling.
It is about as useful, and reliable as a Soviet crop report.