Above: NOAA Satellite IR image showing UHI of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC
Above: A trend comparison slide from my tour, courtesy of my friend, former California State Climatologist Jim Goodridge.
Simon at ACM writes:
So reads the headline on the ABC website, as if it’s something we don’t know. Obviously, as cities increase in size, the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect will also increase. However, the latest “research” bolts this on to the IPCC’s incorrectly exaggerated warming predictions, to give some even scarier scenarios:
Dr Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the UK’s Met Office, and colleagues, report their findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters [although I cannot find the article there right now].
Betts and colleagues found not only do cities retain more heat than rural areas do but hot cities will grow even hotter as the climate warms and cities grow.
By mid-century, night-time temperatures in cities could rise by more than 5.6°C, they say.
At stake are the comfort and health of people who live in cities around the world, especially those who don’t have access to air-conditioning.
“If you’ve been exposed to hot temperatures during the day and you expect relief over night, that becomes increasingly difficult as temperatures at night get warmer,” says Betts. “We have to prepare to live in a warmer world.”
In a concrete jungle, roads and buildings absorb sunlight and trap heat, which also flows as waste out of cars, air-conditioning units and even just the breathing of millions of people crammed into a busy grid of streets.
As a result, cities create their own, warmer microclimates – a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect.
Unfortunately, this is another GIGO* case, where the results from the IPCC’s incomplete models, which vastly overstate the sensitivity of the climate, are plugged into further models of UHI effects (which may or may not be accurate). However, satellite temperatures are continuing to diverge from the IPCC’s predictions, which means that research based on them is the stuff of fairytales.
Read it here.
* Garbage in, garbage out
“heat, which also flows as waste out of cars, air-conditioning units and even just the breathing of millions of people crammed into a busy grid of streets.”
But lets not even mention the possibility that this heat may be responcible for the entirety of the “global” warming… naw, this heat is totally inconsequential except that it will make city people less comfortable.
I just can’t believe they took IPCC numbers polluted by UHI and then added in further UHI!!! But, of course, we’re all goin’ to die, its worse than we thought, where can we run? (how about Antarctica…)
Western cities will keep having to grow and use more power and become hotter because of the scale of immigration (legal and illegal) that the so called progressives don’t want slow or prevent and yet they’re the same group saying we have to beat global warming, become energy independent, etc.
A little fact : London’s indigenous population is 40% lower than it was in 1940. The overall population including all immigrants is still half a million less than 1940. So Londoners have been very environmentally friendly without being forced and would have been very energy secure if they had a sensible immigration policy much earlier.
Let’s also not forget that cities are hotter today because the air is cleaner than it was a century ago which allows much more sunlight to penetrate to ground level to heat up asphalt, brick, metal and concrete. Not many kids getting rickets today because of blocked sunlight.
I have yet to see a single climate model or temperature reconstruction which takes this into account and subtracts heating caused by it.
That Goodridge 1996 chart you have up there is – in my opinion – the best, clearest, most visually arresting example I have ever seen of why the Hockey Stick … philosophy…is so very wrong. It simply smacks you in the face. The assertion, “Who can argue with that?” was seemingly made for this chart.
So, the formula for climate “scientists” seems to be to take something bleedingly obvious to anyone with half a brain, pretend to discover it, and then use their sacred GCMs to “predict” something “worse than we thought” down the road concerning that one “newly-discovered” aspect. The amazing thing is that they get paid to do what an uneducated monkey could do.
To Al Gore’s Holy Hologram; sadly, Rickets and Tuberculosis, formerly associated with Victorian overcrowding and poverty, are on the rise again in UK cities. Rickets is very hard to cure in Asian and Black populations as their skin colour makes them more resistant than white children to sunlight and its curative properties; inner-city poverty and overcrowding still remains a problem which speeds the spread of Tuberculosis.
Has industrial decline and substantial depopulation had any influence on the temperature trends in Detroit? One might expect a ‘negative UHI’ effect – if there is one it would support the causation link between population growth and rising urban temperatures. I can’t think of anywhere else that has experienced such a big decline in human activity.
I have long been of the opinion(which I stress because I can only back it up with anecdotes, not facts) that UHI, not CO2 or any other specific atmospheric component has been responsible for what is being attributed to AGW and the perception that the climate is changing (ie getting “worse” or hotter, or whatever). I believe UHI has had a specific effect on convective weather in many urbanized areas, resulting in more of it, and in some cases, more severe local weather, due to the local increase in the available heat that enters the troposphere. This would of course lead to all kinds of assertions that AGW must real – look how the weather is changing…. If the hypothesis is correct this would be to a degree true, but only on a local scale. We may be seeing a redistrbution of tropospheric heat, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean global warming. It might mean, however, that circulation patterns of heat (and humidity as a corollary) at the tropospheric level may change, or at least vary from what people historically remember, or what might be recorded from a variety of ground sensors .
My back-of-the-napkin view comes in part of having spent most of my life within a region that has urbanized dramatically over my lifetime. I have very distinct remembrances of summer storm patterns of my youth, and current experiences indicate a local change in weather that appear to be to have more to do with humidity than temperature on its own.
At the root is an apparent observed anecdotal correlation between the expansion of cities and the loss of the ameliorating effect of greenspace. Toronto, for example, was always several degrees hotter downtown at night than most surrounding smaller communities, back even when Toronto was only 150,000 people and the the surrounding communities were less than 50K (I’m old enough to remember that…:( ) I have no idea where the UHI “critical mass” to observed effect is, but I believe it to be real (disclaimer: this not an admission of an acceptance of AGW as promulgated by the illiterati…)
If the climate establishment could bring itself to recognize the reality of the UHI, it could get busy fighting beastly hot urban summers with effective and inexpensive local recommendations, rather than crusading for ruinously expensive and probably ineffective CO2 controls.
Local measures that come to mind include increased transpiration (and night radiation?) through trees, parks, and grass, and higher albedo through more reflective roofs and pavings. Steven Chu’s suggestion of lighter roofing will have roughly zero effect on global temperature, simply because roofs are such a small fraction of global area. However, it would have a big impact on city temperatures, and therefore on the living conditions of millions of people.
Every degree cities are cooled through these measures will have the bonus effect that people won’t be running their ACs as much. This reduced electricity consumption will at once reduce real (smoggy) pollution from power plants, and will directly reduce the UHI to the extent it comes from AC units.
A state of Florida publication released about 12 years ago rates different roofing materials and notes that before AC, reflective white roofing tiles were the norm instead of red ones, and that these worked very well. Unfortunately, I can’t find the link to it offhand, but California has a page of links to similar information at http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/coolroof/links.html. See also http://www.homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/94/940509.html.
But unfortunately the AGW establishment minimizes UHI in order to validate its global temperature indices, and thereby loses this opportunity to have a meaningful impact on living conditions!
I have a great idea, lets cool the world (kind of like an air conditioner) to keep the cities at a nicer temperature. Like we could paint the mountains white along with our rooftops and dump iron filings in to the ocean. Very environmentally friendly!
This seems to be further evidence that the AGW crowd is desperately grasping at anything to maintain a slippery foothold on their message. Nothing is too outrageous. Some weeks ago we were assaulted (and insulted) with this ridiculous headline:
“Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012” (http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html)
Today, this appears in my local newspaper:
“Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist” (http://www.physorg.com/news196489543.html)
Apparently, Dr. Frank Fenner believes humans will cause their own extinction. Conveniently, Fenner won’t be around in 100 years to explain himself if his theory proves to be wrong.
I am sick and tired of this absolute nonsense from the AGW horror show. These people spin spooky stories and try to scare the pants off anyone who’ll listen.
Well, I’m weary of this game! Anyone with an ounce of common sense is not listening to this drivel anymore! Go find an island, ride out your disaster, and leave the rest of us alone!
I had an amazing discussion online with a climate alarmist who felt [not thought ? ] that parking lots and UHI should be included in global warming.
His/her feeling was that the temperature of the earth should reflect the experiences of the people inhabiting it. So the 8.3 million new yorkers should get more votes than the 1 million sheep in Montana. Do we create a new temperature index based on nerve endings exposed to it ? Do sheep even count ?
This logic [?] is amazing to me. Silliness abounds !
You can create such an index but it is meaningless when asking how much impact CO2 has made.
soon it will be a “rite” to have air conditioning///payed by tax payers??????
Interesting. To the far west you can see Martinsburg, WV, Hagerstown, MD, and Chambersburg, PA. These cities have populations of no more than 40K (at least in the city limits), yet show up easily. Some of the visible spots in central PA have even less population.
Does this mean that CAGW is better correlated with a cars brakes and radiator than the tailpipe?
Does this mean that replacing a 4 kw petrol engine with a 4 kw electric engine has no net difference since both ultimately convert 4 kw of energy to heat?
Has anyone ever done the correlation between vehicle, air conditioner and furnace sales and global average temperature?
[anonymous comment, please ignore]
“We have to prepare to live in a warmer world.”
Considering you were talking about UHI and cities this statement should have been we have to prepare to live in warmer cities.
That´s a consequence of liberals´”free-love” promoting activities, which are highly exothermic! ☺
It’s worse than we thought.
We have finally found the warmists’ run-away condition:
1. UHI causes people to run their air conditioners more.
2. More air-conditioning causes more UHI;
3. Repeat from step 1.
I’m telling you, they’re building and building to the big punchline: “Anthroprogenic Global Warming is caused by Anthroprogenics and the only way to solve the problem is to limit the number of Anthroprogenics on this here planet!”
Sure, they’ll do everything they can the Ol’ Marxien Way to get all us little starving lemmings in our rags and tatters to buy their Party Line and spend everything we have on nonsense measures to cool the world down a little, then they’ll get us all lined up at the edge of the cliffs and once it’s obvious –even to us lemmings— that nothing else will work, they’ll get their little cattleprods out and start nudging us over the side. Of course, they will retain a few of the younger and better looking among us to clean up and serve and make the world a nicer place for them. Say “La V”.
Part of the problem in getting people to understand that they’re dealing with UHI effects, not generalized warming is that people assume that where they live is representative of the rest of the country. Unless people periodically get out of the city into smaller cities or the countryside, they can live under the delusion that the world is warming. I know of people who haven’t been outside of a large city in years and their only contact with the countryside is from 38,000 feet when they fly over it enroute to another large city.
2 years ago I lived in an apartment in downtown Vancouver and summers were brutally hot. I would go out to my balconey after midnight and still feel the concrete walls of the building radiating heat. The coolest spot around was the beach and this was fortunately a short walk away. Also, I could always go to my air conditioned office on some of the worst days. Unfortunately I didn’t have a USB temperature monitor to record daily temperature fluctations but did setup a VOM with RS232 output once to sample a thermocouple for a few days one summer to get circadian temperature profiles of my apartment.
Now that I live in Kamloops, a city of <100,000 people, the days are hotter than in Vancouver but nights cool down very quickly. Even the "downtown" section of Kamloops seems to cool much faster as the thermal mass of the buildings is much less than downtown Vancouver (which probably has a population greater than that of Kamloops). What is needed is a world temperature measure in which urban temperature records are just considered to apply in the urban area. Urban areas represent a small fraction of the total land mass of the earth and what we really need are lots of temperature profiles of cities compared to the countryside (like Anthony posted a few weeks back). What would be really interesting would be how these varied between noon and midnight.
Does the UHI affect the temperatures recorded by the satellites?
trbixler says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:30 am
Not to mention spreading soot on the ice caps and upgrading our computer operating systems! [Oh…maybe that was the last two crazes I am thinking about.]
beng says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:57 am
Of course it is warmer. Cities, large and small, are burning coal and oil and using nuclear power generated hundreds of miles away and transporting that energy in the form of electricity by the Gigawatts from there into population centers. Of course it is warmer there. As a comparator, has anyone done an IR scan of Amish country? Bet it’s cooler there than in population/size-comparable areas of modern people. Would be a neat exercise to find the answer.
In the winter, all the homes are heated and cooled with Gigawatts from elsewhere, so the UHI should show up more pronounced in the winter and summer than in the temperate spring and fall.
How does this story reconcile with the temps in Vegas? Seems their model doesn’t work there. I wonder why?
Las Vegas Temperatures
Temperatures in Las Vegas
Month High F. (c) Low F. (c)
January 57 F. (13.8) 34 (1.11)
February 63 (17.2) 34 (1.11)
March 69 F. (20.5) 44 (6.6)
April 78 (25.5) 51 (10.5)
May 88 F. (31.1) 60 (15.5)
June 100 (37.7) 69 (20.5)
July 106 F. (41.1) 76 (24.4)
August 103 (39.4) 74 (23.3)
September 95 F. (35) 66 (18.8)
October 82 (27.7) 54 (12.2)
November 67 F. (19.4) 42 (5.5)
December 58 (14.4) 34 (1.11)
Michael said: How does this story reconcile with the temps in Vegas? Seems their model doesn’t work there. I wonder why?
Regardless of their accuracy, the models are modeling global climate not local weather. They can’t be applied to individual sites.
Hu McCulloch says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:25 am
If the climate establishment could bring itself to recognize the reality of the UHI, it could get busy fighting beastly hot urban summers with effective and inexpensive local recommendations, rather than crusading for ruinously expensive and probably ineffective CO2 controls.
———————————-
From papers I’ve read it’s clear that scientists do believe in the reality of UHI and works hard to correct the data for biases from the UHI effect. the UHI is just another example of how humans are changing the climate.
I’ve always suspected AGW was actually AUHIW. This article provides further evidence that those of us who think that way may be correct.
jeff brown says: June 26, 2010 at 11:42 am
” the UHI is just another example of how humans are changing the climate.”
Daniel says: June 26, 2010 at 11:28 am
“Regardless of their accuracy, the models are modeling global climate not local weather. They can’t be applied to individual sites”
So, which is it; a large number of local sites, or the global climate?
Boris Gimbarzevsky,
Interesting observation that people perceive generalized heating due to living in urban and growing urban areas and do not spend appreciable time in the countryside and thus fail to witness the differences in nightfall temperature drop between urban vs rural environment.
I live in a far different enviroment than Vancouver Canada; the American desert southwest and have been conducting UHI data collections. I live in a densly populated and thoroughly urbanized neighborhood; but it is only 7 or 8 minutes from an Indian reservation (Native American) boundary that is abruptly rural and has not been subject to sudden development.
My plan is to take a full year of data by taking a consistant route and at the same time – early evening. So far I am showing roughly 5 degrees F change between urban and rural and have been taking data since March. I don’t claim what I am doing is scientifically rigorous – it’s just fun and interesting to me.
Another thing I have noted from downloading temperature from local recording stations I can find “Global Warming” just by picking temperature stations showing rapid urbanization that I have witnessed since living here; while I can find other stations that I know have no such rapid growth and there is little or no “Global Warming” even if the station is not rated as being perfectly sited. Again, I am not making any kind of claim of certitude, completeness, or novelty – it’s just that it is amazingly easy to see UHI (for yourself) by directly measuring it from a moving vehicle or by looking at temperature trends from rapidly developing areas during the period of development.
Daniel says:
June 26, 2010 at 10:44 am
“Does the UHI affect the temperatures recorded by the satellites?”
No. It’s Urban Heat. Satellites can’t detect Urban Heat. They only detect Rural Heat.
My normal June afternoon at work, and I live through it every year.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4706726429_883f766e38_b.jpg
Anthony,
Thanks for the laugh about the UHI “add on”.
Dramatic slide by Goodridge, but I think some of the context is over my head. For example, why do the horizontal scale and curves start at 1860 when the data seems to start around 1905? And has the story changed or continued the same since 1996? If you came to Tokyo, I’d be sure to come to your talk and ask the questions in person, but Australia is a bit far, even from here.
Cheers.
I’ve worked with data from some of the most rural and isolated weather stations in regions I’ve studied. Places that look great even in Anthony’s scrapbook. Yet they have been warming at the same rate as the cities. There also are non-thermometer indicators that show similar trends in these regions, ruling out UHI as an explanation.
Scientists who have done larger-scale analysis looking for UHI effects on anomaly trends from USHCN or GHCN station data have reached much the same conclusion, in published studies that I’ve seen. Since these weather-station trends also tend to agree with trends derived from satellites, buoys at sea, biological indicators and other sources, UHI again looks unsupported as an explanation for the observed warming trend.
Obviously, the UHI explanation has strong emotional appeal to many on this website. But this is a hypothesis that should be easy to test directly. Where are the data, and the analysis, showing that among stations and datasets contributing to GISTEMP, or HadCRU, the adjusted temperature-anomaly trends from urban stations are rising faster than those from stations way out in the country?
If someone found such results, and they stood up to scrutiny, that would definitely be publishable. Unless that happens, it’s the dog that didn’t bark.
[REPLY – I have; they will. I use USHCN raw, gridded data over the last 30 years and GISS classifications as to urban, suburban, and rural. I expected to find urban sites to warm faster from 1979 – 1998 and cool faster from 1998 – 2008. But instead I find urban sites just plain warm faster to 1998 and cool slower after that. And this is UHI, not microsite issues: urban microsites actually average slightly superior to suburban and rural. ~ Evan]
Andrew30 says:
June 26, 2010 at 12:32 pm
“So, which is it; a large number of local sites, or the global climate?”
From the field I work in (which isn’t climatology or meteorology), I know that if I have a large enough number of data points, I can get the overall picture. But that doesn’t mean I can use the overall picture to determine what’s happening at a particular point. I see meteorology as doing short-term predictions at local levels (‘local’ can be pretty big, of course), and climatology as doing long-term predictions at larger (sometimes global) levels. With quite a bit of overlap….
DirkH says:
June 26, 2010 at 12:41 pm
“No. It’s Urban Heat. Satellites can’t detect Urban Heat. They only detect Rural Heat.”
So if the UHI doesn’t affect satellite data, and the satellite data is accurate, that would seem to be the data to use. I guess the problem would be how far back we have satellite data. I think I’d use the satellite data (over land) and compare it to the land-based (or other non-satellite) measurements to determine the adjustments needed to the land-based readings to account for the UHI (or any other) effect.
Where do they get these people who think that this could possibly pass for real science. Sheesh, a 2 year old could dream this up.
Daddy daddy, why do greenhouses have roofs?
It’s the only way to keep the heat in … sigh.
Evan writes,
“[REPLY – I have; they will. I use USHCN raw, gridded data over the last 30 years and GISS classifications as to urban, suburban, and rural. I expected to find urban sites to warm faster from 1979 – 1998 and cool faster from 1998 – 2008. But instead I find urban sites just plain warm faster to 1998 and cool slower after that. And this is UHI, not microsite issues: urban microsites actually average slightly superior to suburban and rural. ~ Evan]”
I look forward to reading your paper. Why the split at 1998?
Why would we have to wait a 100yrs to find out if we are going to become extinct from rising UHI. If a city were to grow from a couple of million to ten million, then it would become like NYC – hey uhi is high but NYers aren’t going extinct. Doesn’t Mexico city have 40 million?! Anyway I have a survival strategy for those who may be alarmed. Wait for it! …. Leave town. Also, there is growing evidence that warming has stalled since the peak 12yrs ago (or 70yrs ago if you accept that the dustbowl 1930s was warmer still) and could be heading back down. NYC could become a warm island vacation spot.
The irony is that urban heat drives the use of AC which is what made necessary all those coal-fired power plants. That, and the desire of yankees to move to semi-tropical climates.
Highs have been running 95-100 the past two weeks in my neck of the woods. But, it’s 75 inside my house. The 1800 MW of nuclear power six miles away that I help produce means I’m not part of the imagined global warming problem!
Discovery news has also just discovered UHI.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/urban-cities-warming-heat.html
Has anyone actually calculated the cumulative UHI effect from all the cities across the globe? Taking into account the net global effect of all the concrete, asphalt, and general LW radiation emissions and heat sources in and around the thousands major cities?
[REPLY – It affects the temperature level beyond any real question. The real issue is any effect it has on the trend (sic). FWIW, In the last 30 years, USHCN raw data shows cities warming faster from 1979-1998 and cooling slower from 1998 – 2008. Suburban trends lie between urban and rural (GISS designations used). So at least for US cities there appears to be some effect on trend; at any rate, the data is consistent with that hypothesis. ~ Evan]
I often wonder if there is not a real AGW out there, which everyone – especially the alarmists – are ignoring.
Over the past 60 years, there has been an approximate rise of 500% in the amount of land under irrigation – see page 31 0f: http://www.iwmigiam.org/info/GMI-DOC/GIAM-world-book.pdf
In the year 2000, the global area under irrigation was ~4 million sq. kms (400 million hectares, or ~one billion acres), now it is probably ~5 million sq.kms.
Irrigated areas make up only a small part of the world’s surface area, but their local impact on humidity and therefore temperature should be significant. I can only guesstimate the amount of additional water vapour which is now being added annually to the atmosphere, but if you assume 1.5 metres (60 inches) of rainfall equivalent and one third of this is evaporated, then:
(500-80) * (1.5*0.33333) = an increase of 20 billion tonnes of water evaporation in a relatively small part of the Earth’s surface, which must have a significant and measurable upward impact on temperatures in and around the irrigated regions of our planet.
Then, of course, there is the changing albedo of the irrigated areas, compared with what was there before irrigation. Presumably, the surface of the irrigated areas is on average darker than previously and therefore is more heat absorbent, further adding to local temperature anomalies.
Gneiss says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:50 pm
“Where are the data, and the analysis, showing that among stations and datasets contributing to GISTEMP, or HadCRU, the adjusted temperature-anomaly trends from urban stations are rising faster than those from stations way out in the country?”
Here is one;
I look forward to reading your paper. Why the split at 1998?
I’m just a humble co-author. (But, yes, the split was made at my particular insistence.) The split at 1998 is very important because from 1979 – 1998 there is a distinct warming trend and from 1998 – 2008 there is a distinct cooling trend.
Also, regarding microsite issues, one would expect that if a badly sited station will warm faster during a warming phase, it will also cool faster during a cooling phase (as the effect “undoes” itself “on the way back down”).
It is therefore very important that both periods be considered in tandem.
Discovery news has also just discovered UHI.
Yeah, I love the spin.
Not, gosh, UHI is disproportionately affecting temperature readings. Maybe the warming trend has been exaggerated as a result.
But OMIGOD! AGW makes UHI worse! It’s positive feedback, man! We’re all gonna die!
“Daniel says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:52 pm
[…]
DirkH says:
June 26, 2010 at 12:41 pm
“No. It’s Urban Heat. Satellites can’t detect Urban Heat. They only detect Rural Heat.”
So if the UHI doesn’t affect satellite data, and the satellite data is accurate, that would seem to be the data to use. ”
Daniel, i hate to bring it to you, but after reading up on thermodynamics, i have to correct myself: Heat is heat, whether urban or rural, and no thermometer or satellite can find out the difference between urban and rural heat. Sorry for any confusion caused.
Evan Jones wrote,
“I’m just a humble co-author. (But, yes, the split was made at my particular insistence.) The split at 1998 is very important because from 1979 – 1998 there is a distinct warming trend and from 1998 – 2008 there is a distinct cooling trend.”
A good reviewer would take a close look at that choice. 98 was an El Nino year which stands out on the graph, and as an outlier affects the averages in its neighborhood. But is there a physical rationale for splitting the periods before and after, or a statistically significant shift in slope? Are your conclusions stable if you choose a different cut-point, say 1997 or 1999, or (better) the whole modern series? If not, they’re depending on one outlier, and reading “trends” from a very short time series.
Which leads to another question. Where do you see that distinct cooling trend? Looking at monthly GISTEMP anomalies, the 1978-1997 and 1998-2008 periods both have similar, statistically significant and positive slopes.
NCDC slope remains positive but drops slightly below significance (not surprising in such a short series) for 1998-2008, then becomes significantly positive again looking at 1998-present. HADCRU slope becomes nonsignificant after 1998, but is still weakly positive (and steepens if we look 2998-present instead of 1998-2008). Of course these are simple tests.
That should have been if we look 1998-present, not 2998-present.
Alexander K says:
June 26, 2010 at 6:42 am
To Al Gore’s Holy Hologram; sadly, Rickets and Tuberculosis, formerly associated with Victorian overcrowding and poverty, are on the rise again in UK cities…..
_____________________________________________________________________
The rickets problem in the EU at least can be laid at the door of the UN, WTO and Codex Alimentarius. The USA adds vitamin D to the milk sold in stores and made it available very cheaply to school children and the poor. When I went to school milk was $0.02 a carton and soda and candy was not available on school property like it is today.
Codex Alimentarius views vitamins as “hazardous” to your health and sets the maximum dosage allowed at far below what some consider the minimum required by the human body. There is a real controversy raging on the subject of Codex Alimentarius food, farming and vitamins that rivals that around AGW. I have not had a chance to disentangle the mess dealing with the Codex portion, but the food safety/farming issues are as bad and as corrupt as the AGW hoax.
netdr says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:33 am
I had an amazing discussion online with a climate alarmist who felt [not thought ? ] that parking lots and UHI should be included in global warming.
His/her feeling was that the temperature of the earth should reflect the experiences of the people inhabiting it. So the 8.3 million new yorkers should get more votes than the 1 million sheep in Montana….
____________________________________________________________________
Having a deep acquaintance with New Yorkers (all my relatives) and with sheep (I just finished mucking out their barn) I would give the vote to the sheep not the New Yorkers. The sheep have a much better grasp on reality. Further more I would gladly register my flocks votes for them….
Pielke Sr. makes a big deal about this.
Simplistic AGWers often point to the rise in co2 and say look the temperatures have also risen. I point out to them that UHI has also been on the rise and that is your man-made global warming. :o)
It seems NOAA is catching on also. This is from their weather site on 06/25/2010:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=lmk&storyid=54130&source=0
http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/KLOU.html
http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/KSDF.html
IR shows surrounding areas of Louisville Metro area as much as 9F cooler before midnight arrives. I have lived in a rural area for quite some time. I could have told them that!
John
Links are to current temps in previous post. Here temps from 06/25/2010 at both Louisville airports:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=lmk&storyid=54130&source=0
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=lmk&storyid=54130&source=0
Doh!
Standiford Field
24 Hour Summary
Time
EDT (UTC) Temperature
F (C) Dew Point
F (C) Pressure
Inches (hPa) Wind
MPH Weather
Latest 9 AM (13) Jun 25 78.1 (25.6) 66.0 (18.9) 30.1 (1019) Variable 5
8 AM (12) Jun 25 75.0 (23.9) 64.9 (18.3) 30.1 (1019) NNE 3
7 AM (11) Jun 25 71.1 (21.7) 64.9 (18.3) 30.09 (1018) Calm
6 AM (10) Jun 25 71.1 (21.7) 64.9 (18.3) 30.08 (1018) Calm
5 AM (9) Jun 25 73.0 (22.8) 66.0 (18.9) 30.07 (1018) Calm
4 AM (8) Jun 25 72.0 (22.2) 64.9 (18.3) 30.06 (1017) N 5
3 AM (7) Jun 25 73.0 (22.8) 64.9 (18.3) 30.06 (1017) Calm
2 AM (6) Jun 25 73.9 (23.3) 64.9 (18.3) 30.06 (1017) NNE 3
1 AM (5) No Data
Midnight (4) Jun 25 77.0 (25.0) 64.9 (18.3) 30.05 (1017) N 6
11 PM (3) Jun 24 78.1 (25.6) 64.9 (18.3) 30.05 (1017) N 3
10 PM (2) Jun 24 80.1 (26.7) 64.0 (17.8) 30.04 (1017) N 7
9 PM (1) Jun 24 82.0 (27.8) 64.0 (17.8) 30.03 (1016) NNE 12
8 PM (0) Jun 24 84.9 (29.4) 64.0 (17.8) 30.01 (1016) NNE 12
7 PM (23) Jun 24 87.1 (30.6) 64.0 (17.8) 30 (1015) N 14
6 PM (22) Jun 24 88.0 (31.1) 64.9 (18.3) 30 (1015) N 9
5 PM (21) Jun 24 89.1 (31.7) 62.1 (16.7) 30.01 (1016) WNW 12
4 PM (20) Jun 24 89.1 (31.7) 64.9 (18.3) 30 (1015) NW 12
3 PM (19) Jun 24 87.1 (30.6) 71.1 (21.7) 29.99 (1015) NW 14
2 PM (18) Jun 24 84 (29) 71 (22) 30.01 (1016) Variable 7 light rain
1 PM (17) No Data
Noon (16) Jun 24 80 (27) 71 (22) 30.05 (1017) NNW 12
11 AM (15) Jun 24 84.9 (29.4) 73.9 (23.3) 30.02 (1016) W 13
Oldest 10 AM (14) Jun 24 84 (29) 73 (23) 30.02 (1016) W 12
Bowman Field
24 Hour Summary
Time
EDT (UTC) Temperature
F (C) Dew Point
F (C) Pressure
Inches (hPa) Wind
MPH Weather
Latest 9 AM (13) Jun 25 77.0 (25.0) 64.9 (18.3) 30.11 (1019) ENE 9
8 AM (12) Jun 25 73.0 (22.8) 66.0 (18.9) 30.1 (1019) Calm
7 AM (11) Jun 25 69.1 (20.6) 66.0 (18.9) 30.1 (1019) Calm
6 AM (10) Jun 25 69.1 (20.6) 66.0 (18.9) 30.09 (1018) N 3
5 AM (9) Jun 25 70.0 (21.1) 66.0 (18.9) 30.08 (1018) Calm
4 AM (8) Jun 25 70.0 (21.1) 66.0 (18.9) 30.07 (1018) Calm
3 AM (7) Jun 25 72.0 (22.2) 66.9 (19.4) 30.07 (1018) Calm
2 AM (6) Jun 25 73.0 (22.8) 66.9 (19.4) 30.07 (1018) Calm
1 AM (5) No Data
Midnight (4) Jun 25 75.0 (23.9) 66.9 (19.4) 30.06 (1017) Calm
11 PM (3) Jun 24 77.0 (25.0) 66.0 (18.9) 30.06 (1017) Calm
10 PM (2) Jun 24 79.0 (26.1) 66.0 (18.9) 30.04 (1017) N 5
9 PM (1) Jun 24 81.0 (27.2) 64.9 (18.3) 30.04 (1017) N 8
8 PM (0) Jun 24 84.0 (28.9) 66.0 (18.9) 30.02 (1016) N 9
7 PM (23) Jun 24 86.0 (30.0) 66.9 (19.4) 30.01 (1016) N 12
6 PM (22) Jun 24 87.1 (30.6) 66.0 (18.9) 30.01 (1016) NNE 8
5 PM (21) Jun 24 88.0 (31.1) 64.9 (18.3) 30.01 (1016) N 7
4 PM (20) Jun 24 88.0 (31.1) 66.9 (19.4) 30 (1015) WNW 13
3 PM (19) Jun 24 84.9 (29.4) 73.0 (22.8) 30 (1015) WNW 7
2 PM (18) Jun 24 80 (27) 71 (22) 30.03 (1016) WNW 9
1 PM (17) No Data
Noon (16) Jun 24 82.9 (28.3) 75.0 (23.9) 30.04 (1017) NW 7
11 AM (15) Jun 24 82.9 (28.3) 75.0 (23.9) 30.02 (1016) W 12
Oldest 10 AM (14) Jun 24 84 (29) 75 (24) 30.02 (1016) W 8
Looking at monthly GISTEMP anomalies, the 1978-1997 and 1998-2008 periods both have similar, statistically significant and positive slopes.
No doubt!
I am using raw USHCN data. I grid the data using 5-degree boxes.
Needless to say, this bears little resemblance to adjusted GISS product!
It’s all very variable. Did you know there is no “statistically significant” warming from 1979 – 2008? It’s all within standard deviation. Yet I have no doubt it warmed from 1979 – 2008.
White roof tiles? How about white paint with ceramic insulation additives mixed in. Can’t that be used to paint roof white?