Back in land of sense, once a 15K global
average temperature anomaly arises through natural variability then there is such a very strong feedback making reaching a 20K anomaly sufficiently unlikely that I think we should ignore it in same way as possibility of earth jumping into centre of sun.
Not exact matches
For example since the
temperature anomalies used in the analyses are local seasonal
averages, then an increase in the value of a
temperature anomaly might
arise simply from a shift in the local
temperature distribution.
The polar coverage of GISTEMP
arises mainly from the fact that GISTEMP allows each weather station to contribute to an area of radius 1200 km around the station - this distance was determined by examining how
temperature changes with distance in regions with good coverage (see Of
Averages and
Anomalies - Part 1B).