Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A while back in the US there was an ad for a hamburger chain. It featured an old lady who bought a competitor’s hamburger with a great big hamburger bun. But when she opened it up she asked …
I got to thinking about this in the context of whether there is any real danger in a degree or two of average temperature rise, or whether it’s a big bun with no beef. In my previous post, “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics … and Graphs”, I closed by saying:
My conclusion? Move along, folks, nothing to see here …
A commenter took exception to this, saying
When talking about global average temperatures, tenths of a degree really do matter.
Now, if tenths of a degree changes over a century “matter” for the globe, they certainly must matter for parts of the globe.
So here’s your pop quiz for the day: Which US State warmed the most, which cooled the most, and by how much?
To answer this, I used the USHCN State Temperature Database. Here are my findings:
Figure 1. Temperature trends by state, USHCN data. Seven states cooled, and forty-one warmed.
The state that warmed the most was North Dakota (top center), which warmed 1.4°C per century. The state that cooled the most was Alabama (middle of three dark blue states, lower right). It cooled by 0.3°C/century.
To compare with my previous post, here’s a similar graph, of the decadal changes in North Dakota by month.
Figure 2. North Dakota decadal average temperatures by month, 1900-2009. Red line is the average for the decade 2000-2009. Photo is an old North Dakota farmhouse.
As with the US, for much of the year there is little change, and the warming is in November to February. Note that unlike the US, during that four months, the temperature of North Dakota is below freezing (32°F) …
Now, if tenths of a degree “matter”, if they are as important as the commenter claimed, we should have seen some problems in North Dakota. After all, it has warmed by 1.6°C since 1895. That’s almost three times the global average warming.
But somehow, I must have missed all of the headlines about the temperature calamities that have befallen the poor residents of the benighted state of North Dakota. I haven’t seen stories about them being “climate refugees”. I didn’t catch the newspaper articles about how it has been so hard on the farmers and the frogs. I am unaware of folks moving in droves to Alabama, which has cooled by -0.4° since 1895, and thus should be the natural refuge of those fleeing the thermal holocaust striking North Dakota.
In fact, I don’t remember seeing anything that would support the commenter’s claims that tenths of a degree are so important. North Dakota has warmed near the low end of the range forecast by the IPCC for the coming century, and there have been no problems at all that I can find. So I have to say, as I said before,
My conclusion? Move along, folks, nothing to see here … where’s the beef?
APPENDIX: R Code for the US Map
(I think this is turnkey. Sometimes WordPress puts in extra line breaks. If so, it is also available as a Word document here.)
The code requires that you download the USHCN Temperature Data cited above and save it as a “Comma Separated Values” (CSV) file. I downloaded it, opened it in Excel. I split it using “Text to Columns …” into the following columns, as detailed in the USHCN ReadMe file:
FILE FORMAT:
STATE-CODE 1-3 STATE-CODE as indicated in State Code Table above. Range of values is 001-110.
DIVISION-NUMBER 4 DIVISION NUMBER. Value is 0 which indicates an area-averaged element.
ELEMENT-CODE 5-6
02 = Temperature (adjusted for time of observation bias)
YEAR 7-10 This is the year of record. Range is 1895 to current
year processed.
JAN-VALUE 11-17 Monthly Temperature format: Range of values -50.00 to 140.00 degrees Fahrenheit. Decimals retain a position in the 7-character field. Missing values in the latest year are indicated by -99.90.
FEB-VALUE 18-24
MAR-VALUE 25-31
APR-VALUE 32-38
MAY-VALUE 39-45
JUNE-VALUE 46-52
JULY-VALUE 53-59
AUG-VALUE 60-66
SEPT-VALUE 67-73
OCT-VALUE 74-80
NOV-VALUE 81-87
DEC-VALUE 88-94
If that is too complex, the CSV file is here.
Here’s the R code:
# The code requires that you download
# the USHCN Temperature Data
# and save it as a "Comma Separated Values" (CSV) file.
# I downloaded it, opened it in Excel, and used
# "Save As ..." to save
# it as "USHCN temp.csv"
#Libraries needed
library("mapdata")
library("mapproj")
library("maps")
# Functions
regm =function(x) {lm(x~c(1:length(x)))[[1]][[2]]}
#Read in data
tempmat=read.csv('USHCN temp.csv')
# Replace no data code -99.9 with NA
tempmat[tempmat==-99.9]=NA
# split off actual temps
temps=tempmat[,5:16]
# calculate row averages
tempavg=apply(temps,1,FUN=mean)
# calculate trends in °C by state
temptrends=round(tapply(tempavg,as.factor(tempmat[,1]),regm)*100*5/9,2)
# split off states from regional and national
statetrends=temptrends[1:48]
#calculate ranges for colors
statemax=max(statetrends)
statemin=min(statetrends)
statefract=(statetrends-statemin)/staterange
#set color ramp
myramp=colorRamp(c("blue","white","yellow","orange","darkorange","red"))
# assign state colors
mycol=myramp(statefract)
# names of the states (north michigan is missing for ease of programming)
myregions=c("alabama", "arizona", "arkansas", "california", "colorado", "connecticut", "delaware",
"florida", "georgia", "idaho", "illinois", "indiana", "iowa", "kansas", "kentucky", "louisiana", "maine",
"maryland", "massachusetts:main", "michigan:south", "minnesota", "mississippi", "missouri", "montana", "nebraska",
"nevada", "new hampshire", "new jersey", "new mexico", "new york:main", "north carolina:main", "north dakota",
"ohio", "oklahoma", "oregon", "pennsylvania", "rhode island", "south carolina", "south dakota", "tennessee", "texas",
"utah", "vermont", "virginia:main", "washington:main", "west virginia", "wisconsin", "wyoming")
# draw map
par(mar=c(6.01,2.01,4.01,2.01))
return=map('state',regions=myregions, exact=T,projection='mercator',fill=T,
mar=c(5.01,8.01,4.01,2.01),col=rgb(mycol,maxColorValue=255),ylim=c(10,60))
# set up legend boxes
xlref=-.48
yb=.37
ht=.05
wd=.08
textoff=.025
# assign legend labels
mylabels=round(seq(from=statemin,by=staterange/12,length.out=13),2)
#draw legend
myindex=0
for (i in seq(from=xlref,by=wd,length.out=12)){
xl=i
xr=xl+wd
yt=yb+ht
rectcolor=myramp(myindex/11)
rect(xl,yb,xr,yt,col=rgb(rectcolor,maxColorValue=255))
text(xl,yb-textoff,mylabels[myindex+1],cex=.65)
myindex=myindex+1
}
text(xl+wd,yb-textoff,mylabels[myindex+1],cex=.65)
# add annotations
text(0,1.08,"US Temperature Trends (°C/century)")
text(0,1.03,"USHCN Dataset, 1895-2009",cex=.8)
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And I would be willing to bet that North Dakota isn’t the most extreme case globally.
Yet we haven’t heard about the refugees from those other “worse off” places either (if they’re not actually better off – you ever been to North Dakota? Brrrr). More over, I bet a few of them are probably 3rd world countries where the refugee story would play well on the cable outlets.
“Figure 1. Temperature trends by state, USHCN data. Seven states cooled, and forty-one warmed. Note that the center point (white) is a warming of about 0.5°/century, near the global average.”
Do you mean yellowy-orange? White seems to be 0°/century.
HTH.
Interesting — New Jersey has warmed considerably, and the prevailing winds across that state are from the southwest — Pennsylvania, which *hasn’t* warmed to any horrendous extent.
What *has* changed is the landscape. In 1895, New Jersey was mostly rural farmland. In the 1970s, developers started planting 2x4s on the farmlands and growing condominiums, and the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 95 are the two main transportation arteries between New York and points south. Looks like a textbook example of UHI.
Actually, everyone in North Dakota is swimming under 25 feet of water…
But no one ever goes there, so none of us would notice if they were.
/sarcasm
Where I live (in SE Australia) there were two occasions this recent summer where there was a 20C difference in the max temps on succeeding days.
On the first occasion the max of 40C on Day 1 was followed by a max of 20C on Day 2. On the second occasion, the max of 43C on Day 1 was followed by a max of 23C on Day 2.
Tenths of a degree? Give me a break!
And thanks for the work, Willis.
Look at how much North Dakota and Nevada have warmed. Both Senators from North Dakota voted for health care reform and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada played a key role in pushing through the very same legislation. The Senators from the cooler states generally voted against health care reform. This proves there is a direct link between statewide warming and support for massive government run health care schemes. Thus, heightened CO2 levels are responsible for Obamacare.
Should I publish my findings in Nature? It’s not like it’s any more ridiculous than the usual crap they turn out.
Excellent article!
I will.send this to my Senator Lindsey Graham, not that I expect him to read or understand it.
‘When talking about global average temperatures, tenths of a degree really do matter.’
I bet he says that to all the girls.
Thanks again Willis for keeping it real.
It was always one of my main questions; If “global warming” is projected to happen mostly in the upper NH, in the winter and at night was there ever anything to worry about?
Second q; why should the warming “target” those particular times and places? If the guesses are true then all the worries about Africa and India and such are unfounded 😉
I have a sneaky feeling that the places (upper NH – particularly the pole) were warming anyway and the modellers couldn’t explain why so they added the area to their “concerned science”.
How much of that warming is down to UHI?
Odd. The comment I just left on the “NOAA says…” post seems to fit in perfectly here as well at least for short term changes. Here in Sudbury in Northern Ontario, most of 2010 has been nice and warm. We had maybe a half dozen record breaking highs and a few nights that did not go below the normal high in March. It was warm. We also only received 1.4 mm of precipitation instead of the normal 65 mm in March. January, and February were below normal for rain and snow too. Once the snow melted, forest fire warnings abound in March, but that has happened before, just not so early in the year. Indeed, we have been rather warm since late January. This week we are again 4 to 7 C above normal. It is great. Golf courses opened early though this has not been the earliest.
Even snowmobilers, that were disappointed in the lack of snow, were not complaining much. They enjoyed the warmth too. This winter was a huge improvement over our pitiful rain filled summer of 2009. Farmers were a bit worried, but we have now received some rain in April (45 mm so far out of the normal 65 mm for the month), so even their complaints have quieted down.
This winter, we were simply above normal more often than we were below normal.
John M Reynolds
nice article. I have one question.
I have seen in this post and in your previous one that the largest warmings happenend during winter. Does this empirical data falsifies CO2 based global warming?
Here is my line of thought. If CO2 were the main culprit of warming, I would expect to see it acting mainly during summer in the north hemisphere. when there is more light and therefore more uv-visible-ir radiation hitting the northern hemisphere than during winter. (the opposite in the south hemisphere) But what happens is just the opposite, temperatures raise mainly during winter, when CO2 has less time to adsorb radiation, due to the shorter days.
About 18 months ago a freind speculated that Mr Gores film ‘An Inconveiniant Truth’ had sublimable messages inplanting pitures of skellitons sexual acts and death. He said these images induce a religious response to the material presented. I realise theres a little pagan earth loving spirit in all of us, but, ‘HELLO’ whats to crusade over a miniscule tempature change.
I think my freind has hit on something.
Man I miss those commercials.
urederra,
“Here is my line of thought. If CO2 were the main culprit of warming, I would expect to see it acting mainly during summer in the north hemisphere. when there is more light and therefore more uv-visible-ir .”
Most people say the opposite. The problem with your theory is that the forcing due to GHG is constant, at about 1.5 W/M^2. During the summer, insolation is very high, maybe 500 W/M^2 so the proportion added to by CO2 is very small. In winter however, insolation may be only 100 W/M^2 and the addition made by CO2 is proportionally greater. Even more, during winter, absolute humidity is lower, so the proportion of CO2/H2O is greater than during summer.
That new climate in North Dakota now includes the annual disastrous springtime flooding in Fargo.
Top notch !!
the “Average temp by month graph” really puts it in perspective
….Note that unlike the US, during that four months, the temperature of North Dakota is below freezing (32°F) …
this will only offend a few people (646,844 to be precise) – but you need to be careful about little things like this – people are touchy these days
urederra,
If you want a falsification for CO2-based AGW consider the following – The IPCC/”consensus” theory used feedbacks to explain all the warming between 1980 and 2000. The main feedback is atmospheric water vapor. Their theory stated that Anthropogenic GHG forced rising atmospheric temperatures, rising surface temperatures, increased water vapor *and* rising ocean heat content. Since 2000, GHGs and water vapor content have continued to increase, while temperatures have increased less quickly (surface records) or flatlined/slightly-cooled (sat records). In the last three years OHC leveled off too.
This means, as Lindzen said, their models are breaking. If their theory was correct there would be an absolutely massive amount of energy missing somewhere in the system and that is not the case. This implies that the variability from 1980-on was most likely, mostly caused by something else and their CO2-causing-water-vapor-feedback-to-result-in-enhanced-warming mechanism is bogus.
To say that and look at it another way, based on observation from 2000-on, GHG forcings are not capable of explaining 1980-2000.
Q.E.D.
For totally unscientific reasons I can say Global Warming will not happen.
How?
Because In Britain we are already paying £6 a gallon of petrol.
Oil Prices are on the rise.
Interest rates are going to go up.
Financial pain is coming and freezing temperatures will be the icing on the cake for people who are already struggling.
It’s called ‘Sods Law’.
Add to that the overwhelming evidence against AGW and I think lots of ordinary people are going to get very impatient with the Pro Climate change Lobby very soon.
Daniel H (03:20:08) : “Look at how much North Dakota and Nevada have warmed. Both Senators from North Dakota voted for health care reform and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada played a key role in pushing through the very same legislation. The Senators from the cooler states generally voted against health care reform. This proves there is a direct link between statewide warming and support for massive government run health care schemes. Thus, heightened CO2 levels are responsible for Obamacare.
Should I publish my findings in Nature? It’s not like it’s any more ridiculous than the usual crap they turn out”
Since you have failed to use the word “robust”, you may not publish your findings anywhere!
Wendy’s burgers are great, and those were brilliant commercials. That catch phrase is still being used over 25 years later.
We did a tongue-in-cheek posting about a year ago using the same NCDC data. Instead of a map, we had a tabular chart with the states ranked hottest to coolest – see here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/06/20-worst-global-warming-states-in-us-should-they-pay-reparations-for-climate-change-caused.html
[Willis, btw, are you using Excel to produce your actual charts for your postings or other software?]
Those old Wendy’s commercials were pretty good. But nothing compares to the pure awesomeness that was Jason Alexander’s McDLT commercial.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSdUOC8Kac&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]