Well, predictably, the denierati are denying all the other data, quantifiable and phenological, that the Earth is warming. Clinging desperately to one remaining data set, the tropospheric lower temperature, they claim that there hasn't been any global warming for 18 years or so.
You might first refer to the lengthening growing season in the contiguous U.S., as I mentioned here (but still want to go into more detail about).
But I've been wondering when the major El Niño event was going to put a major spike into the temperature record, as the last major one in 1997-1998 did. That high point is the main reason for this specious "no global warming in 18 years" claim. Even though the claim is ridiculous, I wanted to know when the El Niño was going to push up the TLT, so I did some data plotting here.
Well, October has passed, so I've updated the plot with another month of data. I noticed that the previous TLT values from REMSS changed a little, so I used those.
Interesting. Almost exactly the same pattern as seen in 1997-1998. So even if there's an observable drop in November, that doesn't mean it's not going to rise, because after a slight drop in November 1997, the TLT shot up in December 1997 and kept going.
The Niño 3.4 SST is very slightly lower than in October 1997, but that doesn't mean much, because there could be more warm water to the east as compared to 1997. The Niño 3.4 SST may be approaching plateau phase, but there's plenty of heat there to warm up the global TLT.
So, does this modest increase mark the start of the uptick, or will we have to wait one or two more months? I'm not sure about that, but I am pretty sure that we will see a significant increase, and we don't have long to wait.
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