UK’s Daily Mail: Awful August has delayed this year’s harvest but global warming is not to blame

23 08 2008

Note: UK atmospheric scientist John Kettley, is formerly of the Met Office and the Fluid Dynamics Department at the Bracknell headquarters.

JOHN KETTLEY: Awful August has delayed this year’s harvest but global warming is not to blame

Last updated at 3:21 AM on 24th August 2008

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Atrocious: The terrible August weather has delayed the harvest but global warming is not to blame

Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year – by now oil seed rape, barley and oats should already have been gathered.

The delay could mean either a loss in yield or drop in quality, with a subsequent fall in income for farmers for the second year running.

But this is not a symptom of so-called ‘global warming’.

These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties.

It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled. Globally, 1998 remains the warmest of the last 150 years.

Of course, we have seen very hot months in the UK recently, but we should be under no illusion about global warming. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 69 Comments »

Categories : weather

How not to measure temperature, part 69

23 08 2008

Two weeks ago I posted about a story from the Orange County Register titled Urbanization Raises The Heat in Orange County. It was front page news that day, on Friday, August 8th.

The article was fairly well written, citing JPL climatologist Dr. Bill Patzert who also was the source on a  previous story we examined looking at the problems associated with the move of Los Angeles official weather station.

The focus of the OC Register article was the temperature record from the Santa Ana Fire Station, which has a COOP-A station # 047888 located there. The record extends back to 1916:

Warming trend

Examining the upwards trend in the Santa Ana record, the article touched on one of the most common reasons for temperature increase in large cities, the Urban Heat Island effect, or ”UHI”. Curiously, some scientists, such as Parker in 2006, have gone to great lengths to discredit UHI as being “negligible”, even though it clearly is not. The National Weather Service recognizes it as real as evidenced by this quote in the OC Register article:

“Santa Ana now has a lot more buildings, parking lots and streets, which absorb and hold heat, some of it through the night,” says Ivory Small, science officer at the San Diego office of the National Weather Service.

In fact, the National Weather Service includes the UHI factor in one of it’s training course ( NOAA Professional Competency Unit 6 ) using Reno, NV and Baltimore, MD as examples. The Reno station had to be moved because it was producing an erroneous record, and the Baltimore station has so much bias (because it existed on a rooftop of a downtown building) that they simply closed it in 1999.

Since nothing was mentioned in the OC Register article, apparently Bill Patzert at JPL, Ivory Small at the San Diego NWS office, and reporter Gary Robbins of the Orange County Register simply don’t know how much the Baltimore USHCN station, seen below, has in common with the Santa Ana Fire Station.

Baltimore Customs House USHCN
Baltimore USHCN station circa 1990’s photo courtesy NOAA, click for more images

Like the now closed Baltimore weather station, the Santa Ana Fire Department weather station also sits on a  rooftop downtown. But there’s more to it than just that. Read on. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 41 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, weather_stations

Another chance to make comments on climate change

23 08 2008

 

As you may have already read, the CCSP Unified Synthesis Product report, which contains a multitude of errors and misrepresentations, is on hold while the various “synthesis products” catch up in publishing. These are essentially justifications for the contents of the final CCSP.  It was rightly pointed out that the CCSP USP was being pushed for publishing without many of the publications for the justifications of conclusions and recommendations being published first. This was truly a cart before the horse plan.

There will be a number of these parts that public comments will be accepted for.

Here is your chance to comment on two of them:

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE AS COMMENTS CLOSE IN 3 DAYS!

Aerosol properties and their impacts on climate

Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.3

11 July 2008. Public review draft of report is posted. Comments will be accepted from 11 July through 25 August 2008.

See the  invitation to comment and Federal Register notice.

Here is another that you can comment on: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 20 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized