Portland is one of the “greener” cities in the USA. So it would not be surprising to see some stories blaming the current heat wave on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.
It will be interesting to see how they react there in the Portland media to this string of 100 plus days.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Temperatures all over Oregon are expected to shoot past 104 degrees today, making it one of the hottest days in Oregon in years.
KATU Meteorologist Rhonda Shelby said at noon that there is a chance it could get hot enough to break Portland’s all-time heat record of 107 degrees.
full story here at TV station KATU-TV
Less than 2 weeks ago Denver was 104 degrees breaking the record for the day by 2 degrees. Lots of headlines. Today the high was under 60 degrees breaking the all-time record minimum high for all days in the months of July and August by over 5 degrees and not a peep.
I live about 50 miles south of Portland. We are having a couple of days of high temperatures. We had a couple of days almost this hot about a month ago. Last year we had a couple of days with temps almost this high, the year before that ….
Monday the high is supposed to be less than 70 and we’ve had really mild temps all summer (subjective impression). My wife (from Texas) complained long and hard about having to wear a sweater on the 4th of July during the hottest part of the day. Proximity to the river had something to do with this, but not much.
File this under weather != climate.
I see their 3:00 PM ob is just 96… a long ways to go. At least someone is having a summer, cool summer in the upper midwest again this year.
Being from the NW, it should be noted that starting Monday, the temps are forcasted to be 30 F cooler for the foreseeable futer …….
“So it would not be surprising to see some stories blaming the current heat wave on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.”
If it happens it will kind balance out all the “Its a bit nippy today and there are no sunspots, must be a new Little Ice Age” which seems to be the most popular posts of late!
Just an observation. Ozone got pretty thin over Oregon in the last week. The gauze-like thin areas span the length of Washington, especially Oregon, and into California. The swath of thin ozone is moving East into the high plains of these states. Night time temps have been like the high desert; colddddd. Daytime temps have been HOT. I am wondering. Ozone protects us from the heat during the day and keeps heat in at night. Which would mean that when ozone is thin, summer days are HOT and nights are cold, at least in higher altitudes. The Willamette Valley can’t cool off at night like the coast and high desert can. More atmosphere and pollution. And no breeze. Then on the heels of the hot spell, it nearly always follows that some kind of cloud formation will happen just a couple days later. But the heat comes first.
I am wondering if there is a time lag between the initial hit of Sun onto already thin ozone, then more ozone eating UV and cosmic rays hit us, which results in a fast rise in temperature as we get a direct unprotected hit from the Sun, and then cosmic rays seed water vapor into clouds a bit later, cooling us down as the Sun’s rays are reflected back into space.
In Enterprise, Oregon, it is still cooler than last year.
PDX is not going to come anywhere close to their record today…may not even hit 100.
I wonder if global warming can be blamed for DIA (Denver International Airport) only making it up to 53 this afternoon? Normal high is 87.
I have lived in the Portland metro area for 37 years. We have had one of the coolest springs and summers I can remember. Thank goodness for a few hot days, it’s going to be cooler than normal next week!
Here in the Great Lakes basin, summer is a fantasy. Here in Buffalo we’ve not yet officially hit 90°F. The first half of June was the warmest part of the summer {and that was still Spring!}. We recently had a record low high temp. We keep getting promised a ‘pattern change’ but that hasn’t happened yet. And we’ve already passed peak summer heat; it’s all downhill from here.
I’d best get a new snow shovel for this winter — it’ll be a doozy!
Here in Tulsa it is unseasonably cool and has been for over a week. It is hardly breaking 90 moast days… we are ten degrees light from the average
I was just out there. Trust me 100 degrees in Oregon does not feel hot at all unless you bake in direct sunlight for hours. Now back in SC it has been 98 and 98% humidity. One thing that did strike me about the area is the lack of insects. I guess the air is too dry. Seems like when the humidity gets up it all falls out as rain. Here in SC it just gets hotter.
Pamela:” I am wondering if there is a time lag between the initial hit of Sun onto already thin ozone, then more ozone eating UV…”
This is twice in the last couple of days you have referred too “ozone eating” UV. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn’t ozone also constantly being created by solar radiation? You seem to leave out one side of the process.
I live in the PNW, though not that near to Portland. Yes it is hot, but it is not the greatest heatwave we have had, at least not here in Washington. Next week, by the way, the temps may go below normal, and we could see an unusually strong rainstorm for August. Which if Global Cooling were all the rage, the headlines would be all about how AGC caused the unusual cold weather in August.
Isn’t solar radiation/UV ozone PRODUCING?
Sorry, my mind is still on fishing. UV creates ozone, cosmic rays destroy it. When the Sun is UV active it is also protecting us from cosmic rays. So ozone stays nice and thick. But when UV is decreased, cosmic rays also are giving us a direct hit, thinning the ozone in different places. Ozone is not well mixed and is thick in some areas and thin in others. So when cosmic rays hit a thin area, bingo, we get gauze instead of a blanket in that area. Less UV and more cosmic rays act together in a way that leads to decreased ozone.
I assume you are talking about Potland Oregon, not Portland Maine. …been to them both.
Pamela gray, where are your Ozone maps?
Anthony:
Portland has only been keeping temperature records since 1940, six years after Oregon’s warmest year on record. An “all-time high” would not mean much. Of course, if I were a global cooling cultist and Portland were to set an “all-time low”, I would say: BREAKING NEWS: PORTLAND HAS COLDEST DAY IN HUMAN HISTORY; ICE AGE FEARS HEIGHTEN.
Hey, here in Ottawa, we have the same low summer temps, and cloud extra, and rain; but, hey … it’s all due to global warming – which all smart people agree upon.
Here’s a quick summation of the perversness of this whole argument over AGW or ACC (anthrpogenic climate change):
1. The pro-ACC crowd says (or is hoping) global warming is happening, and they call such a catastrophe (or at least one in the making). Yet slightly warmer temperatures globally would be great for agriculture as well as decreasing cold-related deaths among humans. This far surpasses heat-related deaths as has been noted.
2. The pro NCC (natural climate change) crowd says (or is hoping) that global warming is not happening, but global cooling would be bad for humans and many of our endeavors such as agriculture.
One might be given to wonder about the irony, except that for myself I see this twist as a derivation of politics, which twists many things. This isn’t merely a debate about science. It is a debate about the political direction of the entire human race, starting first with the most developed and most powerful nations.
Hmmm I just pulled out the records i started to keep last year and see that on this date in 2007 the morning low was 66.5 and the afternoon high was 100.9. That is here in N E Alabama. Today our low this morning was 59.2 and our high was 85.6. Not bad for the deep south but not unusual either last year or this year. it is just weather. But that being said makes me wonder how it can be blamed on global warming?
I know that most scientists insist that you have to have 30 years to set a trend in climate, I have no problem with that but I wonder how many years of a change from the past in the 30 have go go by before you start to reconsider the changes you see. In my opinion ( they are sort of like butts everyone has one) the past decade would indicate that while not long enough to be a trend it might be time to consider just what might happen if it turns in to a trend and what we need to do to prepare for the change. I think that if we have to wait for 30 years of cooling to pass before we can consider preparing for possible cooler times we would be remiss in our duties to man kind. If we have to have30 years of cooling before our scientists respond to our leaders. Who is going to be at fault for the unnecessary death caused by the unusual cold weather that occours before the 30 year time frame has passed. I am truly afraid that our scientific community is letting us down and our politicians are helping them. One day some one will have to be accountable for what is about to happen. I wonder if it will be passed off as natural variability? If it is a natural event no one can predict? If the cooling happens as it looks like is about to happen even if it is for a couple of decades there will be scapegoats and the politicians have themselves covered with the statement — The best estimate the scientific community could give us was that it was going to be catastrophic warming not cooling. And now you know who is going to be the scape goat. I would ask our scientific community that if they are skeptical about the AGW hypothesis to say so and get down to some real science.
You may snip Anthony or Charles I just get PO’d about some of the things being passed off as data collection and science.
Bill Derryberry
I also live in the Pacific Northwest. We are still talking about the June snow and heavy frost in July. The forecasters are predicting near record temps tomorrow. According to the records, 101F is the all time record for the hottest month of the year. I have survived higher temps, but I can’t remember the day it occured. The strange thing is, they seem to have shortened the years that they recognize. The records had included the late 1800’s, but now the weather records only include 1940 forward. Why is that?
You didn’t produce your data and explain the model which forecast those future headlines.
Denver suffers from severe UHI. Neither Boulder nor Fort Collins got over 100 this year (very unusual,) and we have a had a beautiful summer with warm days and cool to cold nights. Check out the data from CSU and NCAR.
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/~autowx/fclwx_plotsearch_form.php
http://www.eol.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/weather.cgi?fields=tdry&fields=rh&fields=cpres0&fields=wspd&fields=wdir&fields=raina&site=fl&units=english&period=monthly
It has turned very cold with torrential rains and flooding. We have had over two inches of rain in the last 36 hours ,and are expected to double that before Sunday. The Fort Collins New West Festival is looking to be a complete disaster this year. I hope campers are not getting trapped by snow in the mountains.
http://www.downtownfortcollins.com/
I’m here in Portland. Reporting from deep behind enemy (alarmist) lines. It was definitely unseasonably hot here in PDX, Oregon for the last two days – but it’s been unseasonably cool here for much longer. Like, two years or so.
The alarmists here don’t miss a chance to connect ANY type of weather to AGW.
As I said it’s been so cool here for most of the past two years, and The Oregonian newspaper even found it necessary to publish an article to reassure their alarmist subscribers that despite the long stretch of cold weather the AGW apocalypse was indeed just around the corner. It was titled, “You call this global warming ? Uh, yeah”…
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=NewsBank&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=11F8E32029D16DD8&p_docnum=2&p_queryname=1
Here in England, we haven’t had a summer for two years now. 2007 was awful, and this summer never got off the ground. A week ago people were even putting their heating systems on for a couple of days – unheard of in August! And we had condensation on the inside of our windows for three nights this week – which I’ve never known at this time of year. We’ve only two weeks or so of summer left before the leaves start to turn brown. It’s depressing! We’ve had both low temperatures and lots of rain (lots!). But strangely, looking at the Central England Temperature (CET) data, the figures don’t reflect what everyone’s experiencing.
Concord, New Hampshire is 2.4 degrees below normal for the first half of August. This has occurred despite the ocean being warmer than usual to our east. Night-time lows aren’t to blame as much as day-times highs. Lots of cloud-cover, and in half a month we’ve already had 1 1/2 times the usual rain for the entire month of August.
Some summer squash is getting moldy even while growing. This is bad news. It is hard enough to give away a zucchini around here, even when they’re perfect. You leave them on a neighbor’s porch, but don’t ring the doorbell.
Caleb (02:29:33) :
“Some summer squash is getting moldy even while growing. This is bad news. It is hard enough to give away a zucchini around here, even when they’re perfect. You leave them on a neighbor’s porch, but don’t ring the doorbell.”
During the Zucchini Festival in Keene NH, locals lock their cars or else they’re liable to find a dozen zukes when they get back.
Early indications for Winter 2008/9
A forecast from the British Met Office issued 10th july, to be updated in September.
“Winter temperatures are more likely to be either near, or above average, than below average over much of the European region. For northern Europe, including the UK, Winter 2008/9 is likely to be less mild than last winter”
“The statistical predictions are based primarily on the influence of North Atlantic Ocean temperatures on European winter climate, and changing expectations for winter due to the CLIMATE WARMING TREND.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/winter2008_9/
The AGW science is proven a cold and icy winter seems unthinkable.
“So it would not be surprising to see some stories blaming the current heat wave on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.”
If it happens it will kind balance out all the “Its a bit nippy today and there are no sunspots, must be a new Little Ice Age” which seems to be the most popular posts of late!
Mary, I see you conveniently conflate stories in the news media, with posts on a blog. Anything for the AGW cause though, right? LOL!
16 degrees cooler than last year here in Enterprise, and we have a heat wave watch. The nighttime temps are in the 50’s and below. The days are hot.
ozone map (limited view from GOES satellite)
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/rt/viewdata.php?product=o3_us
M. White,
The Met Office also predicted :
1. A hot summer last year for the UK
2. 2007 to be the warmest year ever globally
3. A typical UK summer for 2008
All three were wrong, and yet they continue to embarrass themselves by spewing more nonsensical GW propaganda.
“Steve Berry: Here in England, we haven’t had a summer for two years now”. That’s a little harsh, Steve: we had a nice wee touch of summer in February.
I can echo what Steve Berry said further up this thread.
Last night the temperature in my part of England was 9 degrees C – in the middle of August.
This morning we were seriously debating if we needed to bring the central heating back on to warm the house up.
Forecast has been for rain pretty much every day this month
But of course, this is weather, not climate.
And my 9 degrees hasn’t been adjusted yet……
Max
I watched the KATU weather video. Meteorologist Rhonda Shelby did not mention when the record temps that were about to be broken were set. According to Wikipedia (Portland, Oregon – Climate) “The highest temperature ever recorded was 42 °C (107 °F), set on July 30, 1965 as well as August 8, 1981 and August 10, 1981.” It was really hot in the mid-60s.
I grew up in Camas, WA (now a Portland bedroom).
The folks around here who chat on about the heat either have short memories or weren’t here in the mid-60’s. As I recall, the summer of ’67 (between my sophomore and junior HS years) set records for consecutive days without rain, consecutive daytime temps over 80, consecutive over 90, and consecutive over 100.
I suppose I’ll have to dig out the records to see if my memory is correct…
Thursday may have hit 103, but the humidity was only 22%. Not bad at all. My 32-mile commute home from Camas to Aloha was almost tolerable (no AC in my Jeep).
OMG
I just went looking for records and found this:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/jan/jan-dailyext2007.html
Take a look at the box for January 1, 2007.
Maybe this explains part of the problem with the surface record?
OMG, Part 2:
According to this, Vancouver is in Oregon as well…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/nov/novemberext2006.html
I live about twelve miles south of Portland, in the quiet town of Gladstone, Oregon. I only started picking tomatoes two weeks ago, due to a very chilly Spring and early Summer. So let’s have more of that AGW. I can’t can tomatoes if they’re all freaking green by September!
Additional European perspective, here in Belgium we have actually kept the heating on in our offices (old stone buildings, oriented north), before moving there we thought of air conditioning it for the summer, now we just heat nearly all year round:)
Clouds have now appeared directly in the spot where the ozone had thinned considerably over the last week. They even have the same spotty look to them that the ozone layer had. I checked the water vapor level earlier and there was water vapor available before the clouds appeared. Probably coincidence but I will keep checking from now on to see if it happens again. Wish the GOES satellite website included global ozone maps.
Is that an icecap in the background of the picture?
Additional European perspective, here in Belgium we have actually kept the heating on in our offices (old stone buildings, oriented north), before moving there we thought of air conditioning it for the summer, now we just heat nearly all year round:)
I wonder if the Stevenson Screen or MMTS is located right next to one of those heated buildings . . .
Steve Perry – “But strangely, looking at the Central England Temperature (CET) data, the figures don’t reflect what everyone’s experiencing.”
Will you please stop putting this sensationalistic conspirital guff on the blogs. The fact the rain has been more persistant (and not the usual heavy summer showers) shows there is a lot more cloud and this means warmer nights. All thats happened in the last two summers is the jet stream is a lot further south than it usually is, you can see this nicely on the SST map of the Atlantic where the increased cloud and wind have produced a cooling anomoly probably as a result of the recent La Nina. http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.8.14.2008.gif
This kind of summer is not that unusual and is part of Britains rich meteorological history (nice to see the Ozzy’s getting cold weather, about time too!)
“1. A hot summer last year for the UK
2. 2007 to be the warmest year ever globally
3. A typical UK summer for 2008
All three were wrong, and yet they continue to embarrass themselves by spewing more nonsensical GW propaganda.”
And after every single embarassing forecast screw-up they employ revisionism and get backed up by climate scientists. Meteorologists stay silent.
Stewart (06:41:35) :
“1. A hot summer last year for the UK
2. 2007 to be the warmest year ever globally
3. A typical UK summer for 2008
All three were wrong, and yet they continue to embarrass themselves by spewing more nonsensical GW propaganda.”
Comrade Stewart-
Some points to quell your revolutionary fires against those that conspire against us (don’t forget your tin foil cap…they could be listening!Your points:
1- Where did you get ‘hot’ summer from, it was however warmer than average last year.
2- based on surface temperatures 2007 was either the warmest or second warmest, still very warm compared to average.
3- Typical UK summer- UK covers N. Ireland Scotland and Wales so is a broad spread but it is very typical I’m afraid. The south east of England has had a few good spells of weather whilst the north and, especially the west, has had slightly below average temperatures but higher rainfall than average.
The UK is in many ways a specialcase, it is influenced by weather from the Arctic, the Atlantic and contuinental europe as well as warm water from the Gulf Stream and the ending point of the jet stream. If a high pressure system is in the wrong place and sticks, then this spell of weather stays around for a while, described as the low pressure cannon elswehere in this blog.
ie…Its normal!!
Mary. 2007 was NOT the warmest, or even the second warmest – in fact, you’re not even close! 1998 was warmest, followed by 2005, then 2003, then 2002, then 2004, then 2006, then 2001, and finally we get to 2007. 2008 will almost certainly be cooler still.
As for the UK, 2006 was warmest, then 1990 and 1999, then 1949, then 2002, then 1997, then 1995, then 1989 and 2003, then 1959, 2004 and 2007. So please desist from posting such stuff on the internet.
As for this year’s UK “warmer nights”, I laughed so much I knocked my warming cocoa over. Warmer nights!!! It’s been the evenings and nights that have been so cool – that’s why condensation has occurred on the inside of windows, and heating systems have sprung into action by themselves when air thermostats have kicked in. My point anyway, was that the CET figures don’t reflect this cooling, suggesting urban island heat effect on the recording stations. Where I live – in the south of England and away from an urban area – the temperature has been very cool for July and August. Yet the CET shows 16.2 degrees C for July. But certainly not feeling like it at all.
And Stewart is correct. The UK most certainly has not had a “typical summer” at all. I think I may have a few years on you, and “typical” is a few hot days and then a storm – that’s the norm for all the decades I’ve been here. The Met Office did indeed forecast a hot summer 2007. I was arguing that point on a blog back then with very many others. Even those who were pro-warming were admitting that the Met had got it wrong, but said that they couldn’t have foreseen the Jet Stream movement. So Stewart is completely correct on all three points. I think you owe him an apology.
Steve- [snip] To help you back to the path of sanity away from conspiracies:
“GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation
The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the “El Niño of the century”. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle.
From the Met Office
“July 2008
Mean temperatures ranged from close to average across SW England and S Wales to over 1 deg C above average across Scotland. Rainfall was generally above or well above average across Northern Ireland, England and Wales, but close to average across East Anglia. Rainfall over Scotland ranged from below average across the north-west to above average across the south-east. Sunshine was generally close to average across the UK.”
And finally ladies and gentlemen the mean temperatures for the British summer of 2007: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2007/summer/maps/TMean_Anomaly%20No%20Stations.jpg
These are the facts [snip]
Mary. [snip ad hom] I see you were referring to GISS!!! Ah, that will be where you’re going wrong then Mary. You are British, yes? Yet you choose GISS. Now, why could that be? Umm. Errr. Ah, I see now.
I see you didn’t back up your “warmer nights” with anything. Noted by everyone, I’m sure. And neither did you apologise to Stewart either.
Now, for the UK and climate change. Yes, I like facts too. Do you remember what was said? “The UK can expect hotter, drier summers, and wetter winters”. Mary, reading between your rather amusing lines and comments on conspiracies, I’m picking up that sometimes, just sometimes, you may visit the Met Office’s web site. Am I right, Mary? You get your warming figures from GISS, but your UK temps from the Met. Is that right Mary? Why again? Oh yes, I remember. Nasty old HadCrut. Anyhoo…next time take a look at the chart for summer and winter precipitation (that’s rain, Mary). What will you see there? What you’ll see is a complete reversal of that predicted. Since 1980, rainfall has increased in summer, and decreased in winter. No need of a conspiracy, Mary. It’s all there for you to read. If you cannot, then ask your teacher to read it out to the class.
Oh, and I forgot to add that June 2007 was the wettest June ever recorded in central England. But wait…I’ve just heard that August is the wettest on record so far. But I will check that. Strange, isn’t it, Mary, when we were supposed to get “hotter, drier summers”?