Comments on: 1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA

By: Vote for the Blog that Changed US Climate History « Watts Up With That?

Vote for the Blog that Changed US Climate History « Watts Up With That? — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:24:17 +0000

[...] the much touted year 1998 formerly known as “the hottest year on record in the USA” fell to a close second behind 1934 during the peak of the dust bowl [...]

By: Shannon

Shannon — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:05:41 +0000

You are deeply confused here. The data you are citing is temperature CHANGE data – not temperature data. If you see a large positive number, that means that that year was warmer than the previous year. You need to integrate the data to see relative temperature. (For each data point, create a running total and plot that.) Do this and you will see that the 30s were some of the coldest years in the data set. You will also see that since around 1990, every successive year is warmer than any other year in this data set. You are misrepresenting the data and spreading misinformation.

By: brian kelly

brian kelly — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:32:55 +0000

NASA is a public agency funded with public dollars. Any research or corrections on climate data that they have made must be shared with the public. That is the law.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:09:23 +0000

Spread the “boomerang theory”. The boomerang theory is a hybrid of the HOCKEY STICK with one difference…. it has the correct numbers in its diegram… it bends in the 90′s and in the 30′s :)

By: Clothcap

Clothcap — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:41:16 +0000

1998 was a scorcher. It’s cooler now but still pleasantly warm. Ok warming, stop anywhere round here please. :) As Canute or someone said to the sea.
Thanks Anthony, and of course your aides for your work. It’s appreciated.
How can I get locations for Turkish temp stations? Any assistance appeciated.

By: ChronoFish

ChronoFish — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:16:28 +0000

Couple things here. First of all global warming is NOT defined by one data set. Nor is it defined by “recent highest” temperatures.

It’s good foder for the unconvinced. But it’s not about absolutes – it’s about trends. And every data set I’ve seen trends to warming, and faster warming in the most recent years.

You don’t have to believe. And you go bury your head when articles like this (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2069726720070820?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews) come around.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Personally I would welcome a shorter winter and warmer water here in the North East (US). Shipping companies are loving the reduced ice flow. (You can ignore global glacier reduction all you want, but if you’re a global shipper, you better pay attention).

Obviously the oil companies *like* the idea of global warming if it means easier access to oil.

Go on – ignore it. But if you’re an investor, you can bank on it.

25ft rise in ocean levels? I’ll have water front property!

-CF

By: Walter E. Wallis, P.E.

Walter E. Wallis, P.E. — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:32:25 +0000

The concept of an average earth temperature is ludicrous on the face of it. I cannot get past the third paragraph of the ASA article on adjusting surface temperature data without wishing I could get the IRS to accept such crap.
You cannot accurately measure it and no average has any meaning.

By: Rod Duke

Rod Duke — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:07:25 +0000

My back ground is in Chemistry and I am well versed in the methodology of Scientific Research.
This leads me to the question: Has anyone thought to question the accuracy of the CO2 concentrations that are so glibly presesented?
I have seen one graph presented by a lone researcher located on one of the Hawiian islands but it lacked the methodology, parameters of sample collection, and confidence values.
I have tried to find a source for CO2 detectors but most are for industrial use and are +- 50 PPM for accuracy. I found a Vaisala CO2 detector with very good detection levels and on their web site I found a link to an outdoor CO2 monitoring experiment.
What astounded me was that over the limited time period that was presented on their graph, the variance of the CO2 levels was 100 PPM!
Since the collection of temperatures presented in support of anthropogenic global warming are not scientifically valid, why would anyone assume that the CO2 levels would be?
It is much more difficult to measure a gas concentration with such precision than it is to measure temperature.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:54:24 +0000

The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the 2nd warmest on record and within 0.1°F of the record set in 1998. Using final quality controlled data from the recently released USHCN Version 2 data set (see details below), the 2006 annual average temperature was 54.9°F, 2.1°F (1.2°C) above the 20th Century mean and 0.08°F (0.04°C) cooler than 1998.—NOAA website recent quotes

By: M. Simon

M. Simon — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:24:29 +0000

Annoyed | August 11, 2007 01:22 PM asks:

How are we going to get our energy needs met with business as usual?

May I suggest a search on:

IEC Fusion Technology

The USA has quite a robust program in that area. I expect to see a working reactor in 10 years. Less if we push harder. All our eggs are not in the ITER basket.

By: Meathead

Meathead — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:40:18 +0000

How do you obtain real values from an open system? How do you remove the contributions of solar heating from say road building or ice melt to identify CO2 contributions? If we are only measuring surface temp, how do we account for the entire column? How can a hidden algorithm be the basis for a crusade? just asking.

By: Climate Tony

Climate Tony — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:32:22 +0000

The “1998 is the warmest year” claim originated with the NOAA/WMO estimate, not with NASA. I think they crunch the numbers a little differently. Has anyone figured out whether 1998 is still the warmest year according to NOAA.

It would seem pointless to crow about egg on the face of Hansen when the media’s 1998 claims were originating from the NOAA calculations.

By: Iconoclast421

Iconoclast421 — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:59:00 +0000

The 1930′s? During the great depression? How do we know some homeless guy wasnt sleeping under the thermometer?

By: Sir Fred Wacko

Sir Fred Wacko — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:04:41 +0000

Well for those of you saying you have to look at the global picture, Id just like to say here in Australia this winter has been one of the coldest in many many years, all over the world we have had many many floods this year, looking at the average temp of that flood water, Id say it would have to be cold.

By: Sean Seefried

Sean Seefried — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:54:36 +0000

Top 10s don’t tell you that much about trends. Let’s say I’m a contractor for a few years and then switch to a steady salary-based job. I could make enormous amounts of money some months while I’m a contractor and in others make almost nothing. I might make more money overall when I’m a salaried employee. If we did a Top 10 analysis of all the years I’d been working then we’d see those “spikes” during the time I was a contractor plain as day. But we’d miss the fact that my earning power had been higher as a salaried employee.

Plus, a helpful commentor on Slashdot had the following to say:

I don’t think demoting 1998 to the 2nd-highest US temperature in a century (barely — by 0.01 annual average degree) is a big deal either. 1998 is an awfully close second. I also wouldn’t ascribe much to the the claim that “half” the top ten years in the US were before WWII (1921, 1931, 1934, 1938). Last I checked, 4 is less than half of ten :-) Two others were in the 1950s (1953, 1954), and the rest were 1990, 1998, 1999, and 2006. Perhaps this is merely indicating that, in the US, lately it’s been the hottest it’s been since the “dust bowl” years. That’s not a pleasant thought.

The TOP 10 annual temperature years in the US are (celcius degrees from mean):

year annual 5-year mean
1 1934 1.25 0.44
2 1998 1.23 0.51
3 1921 1.15 0.15
4 2006 1.13
5 1931 1.08 0.27
6 1999 0.93 0.69
7 1953 0.90 0.32
8 1990 0.87 0.40
9 1938 0.86 0.36
10 1954 0.85 0.47

If you look at the top ten ranking for the 5-year means, the pattern is pretty clear:
1 2000 0.52 0.79
2 1999 0.93 0.69
3 2004 0.44 0.66
4 2001 0.76 0.65
5 1932 0.00 0.63
6 1933 0.68 0.61
7 2003 0.50 0.58
8 2002 0.53 0.55
9 1998 1.23 0.51
10 1988 0.32 0.51

The 1930s are down at 5th and 6th place. 2005 and 2006 are left out because you can’t calculate a 5-year window around them yet.

Finally, the error changes the GLOBAL pattern insignificantly, and the global trend in the last couple of decades is greater than the USA trend.

In all, it’s a worthwhile error to catch for the US data, but it doesn’t change much about the overall pattern.