Hard lesson about solar realities for NOAA / NASA

30 10 2008

Hard lesson about solar realities for NOAA / NASA

Reposted here: October 30th, 2008

by Warwick Hughes

The real world sunspot data remaining quiet month after month are mocking the curved red predictions of NOAA and about to slide underneath. Time for a rethink I reckon NOAA !!

Here is my clearer chart showing the misfit between NOAA / NASA prediction and real-world data.

Misfit NOAA / NASA prediction
Regular readers might remember that we started posting articles drawing attention to contrasting predictions for Solar Cycle 24, way back on 16 December 2006. Scroll to the start of my solar threads.

Then in March 2007 I posted David Archibald’s pdf article, “The Past and Future of Climate”. Well worth another read now, I would like to see another version of David’s Fig 12 showing where we are now in the transition from Cycle 23 to Cycle 24.
Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Issued April 2007 from NOAA / NASA

NOTE from Anthony: We now appear to have a new cycle 24 spot, which you can see here: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 233 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

How not to measure temperature part 73, in the middle of nowhere

30 10 2008

The idea with measuring climate accurately, is to get as far away as possible from human/urban influences so that those things don’t bias the readings of the thermometer. For example, on my way from Las Vegas to Reno this week, I passed through the near-ghost town of Mina, Nevada, which has a USHCN station. Mina is about as in the “middle of nowhere” as you can be. In fact, the view to the east of the Mina USHCN station is stunning for it’s remote beauty:

According to Wikipedia, Mina has quite a varied range of temperature:

Average July high temperatures range from 61° to 96 °F, with January averaging between 22° and 47 °F. The highest temperature ever recorded in Mina was 110 °F in 1933, with a low in 1990 of –23 °F. Mina receives very little rainfall, and in an average year gets about six inches, with no month getting more than one inch in a normal year. The Mina Airport is at the southeastern end of town.

The USHCN station is at the private residence of the airport operator, who also runs a KOA type trailer/RV park. The airport is a simple dirt strip, so no runway to generate extra heat. I’ve been all over the USA looking at the USHCN network. In almost every station I visit, there’s some sort of surprise. Mina was no exception, and I discovered what Stevenson Screens are really used for: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 26 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations

MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

30 10 2008

Many people have pointed me to this story, I wanted to read about it a bit before posting it.  Almost two years ago, when this blog was in its very first month, I posted this story on the puzzling leveling off of global methane concentrations. FYI Methane has a “global warming potential” (GWP) 23-25 times that of CO2.

CDIAC has an interesting set of graphs on methane, the first of which shows that indeed global concentrations of CH4 through 2004 have leveled off:

This one on latitude -vs- concentration would surely seem to point to anthropogenic sources of CH4:

So here is yet another addition to the puzzle, which seems to point in the opposite direction:

MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

From: TG Daily By Rick C. Hodgin

Boston (MA) – Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature – and not the direct result of man’s contributions.

Methane – powerful greenhouse gas

The two lead authors of a paper published in this week’s Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 73 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change

NOAA: U.S. breaks or ties 115 cold and sets 63 new snowfall records

30 10 2008

Of course many of you that live in this weather already know this, but there is an early start to winter this year, not only in the USA, but also in London, where it snowed in October for the first time in over 70 years.

So far, no mention of this broadly distributed U.S. record event in the mainstream media. There are a few individual mentions or record lows in Florida. See this Google News search.

Here, from NOAA’s  National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), is a list of these new or tied records for October 29th, 2008.

I find the -25 below in Alaska interesting, since it bested the old record by 4 degrees.

Here are the 115 new or tied low temperature records: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 98 Comments »

Categories : weather