Pielke Sr. Responds...

...to continuing record high temperature readings from the UAH satellite. Specifically, I asked him when we might know the result of this "short term test" of Roy Spencer's hypothesis (vs.the IPCC's, read through link). He responded::

Thanks for alerting me to your weblog. I contacted them [UAH], and they reported there is a drift in the part of the diurnal cycle that the AMSU sensor samples. I have urged them to write a weblog on this issue to clarify as all of us are comparing with their long term average.

In the July analyses of UAH and RSS (which is from a different set of satellites without the drift) we will see if this record warm anomaly appears. I have been informed that since 1992, the RSS and UAH data closely agree with each other. The differences that do occur provide us with a measure of the uncertainty in the assessment of these climate metrics.

All of us should follow this data closely (along with the upper ocean heat data) as I feel a much better consensus can be achieved if we focus on this information, rather than the use of a global average surface temperature trend to assess global warming.

And later:

On the two hypotheses, however, we need to go through the current El Nino to see if the heat remains elevated or returns to a long term average. The upper ocean heat data will also be key in this assessment.

Given the other side of El Nino: some time in 2010 or 2011.