From the “dashed hopes for the warmest year evar!” department comes this update from Dr. Ryan Maue on the global surface temperature:

Via Twitter:

Global temperatures have generally settled to +0.26°C compared to 1981-2010 climatology continuing downward glide thru 2017 (black line)

He adds:

Tropical vs. non-tropical temperature anomalies have balanced out mostly for the past few months. No El Niño suggests continued T levels:

In a nutshell what Dr. Maue is saying is that without a strong El Nino event to boost temperature, global temperatures are stabilizing around +0.26°C. FYI, NCEP data used in these plots is from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The data is available here: http://ift.tt/2tS2F2K

Recently, we covered a story from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) that called off their El Niño watch. BoM says:

All eight international models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology now suggest tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures are likely to remain ENSO-neutral for the second half of 2017.

It’s a tough business to be in when your CO2 driven “climate change” can’t get there unless a natural ENSO event pushes up the temperature for you. Meanwhile, Justin Gillis at the New York Times claims “Earth Scorching CO2” is higher than ever while temperatures stabilize at a value that is the same as about 1980 (0.27°C), according NASA’s GISTEMP:

Land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with base period 1951-1980. The solid black line is the global annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year lowess smooth. The blue uncertainty bars (95% confidence limit) account only for incomplete spatial sampling. [This is an update of Fig. 9a in Hansen et al. (2010).]

Looks like that big El Niño driven peak in GISTEMP of 0.98°C for 2016 could be coming down in 2017 if the current values hold and ENSO neutral conditions remain.

Just look at the sea surface temperatures, there’s not a lot of warm water:

We live in interesting times.