From the story: The Australian’s overheated time warp misses half of 2010 which had a NOAA press release in it below the fold, Dr. Richard Keen weighs in and does a spot check of the data from his own NOAA station (he’s an official observer).
And if you find this map hard to look at, you aren’t alone in seeing spots.
Keen writes:
Lawrimore’s comment…
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north. Also, the Great Lakes aren’t freezing as early or as much. “As cold outbreaks occur, cold air goes over the Great Lakes, picks up moisture and dumps on the Northeast,” he says.”
…shows a complete lack of understanding of weather (which makes up climate).
East coast snows are caused by lows off the coast, and if the storms move north, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC et al. find themselves in the warm sectors of the lows, and enjoy warm southerly winds and rain.
Furthermore, during the snow storms, the winds are from the northeast bringing moisture from the Atlantic (hence the name “nor’easter” for these storms); very little of the moisture comes from the Great Lakes. One of Philadelphia’s snowiest winters was 1978-79, when the Lakes were all but frozen over. Along the east coast, a region that averages very near freezing during the winter, the limiting factor for snow storms is not moisture, but temperature. Most storms are rain.
Now, the spot check.
NOAA’s calculation of the global temperature is based on their analysis of departures at 2000 or so grid points. One of those points included my weather station at Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, a location with no UHI or other troublesome influences. The NOAA map of June anomalies for the US, based on an unknown selection of stations, has Coal Creek sitting on the +4F contour.
The Coal Creek record is long enough to calculate 30-year normals, and June 2010 comes in at +1.0F above normal.
That’s 3 degrees less than the NOAA estimate for the same location, which is the difference between June being in the top 3 or being in the middle third. Now, this is simply a spot check of one of NOAA’s 2000 grid points, but it leads to the question of how far off are the other grid points?
Dr. Richard Keen
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In all fairness, I think Lawrimore was talking about two different events – snow from Nor’Easters, and lake effect. I do not think he was trying to say open water over the Great Lakes would enhance east coast snowfall. At least that was my impression.
HOWEVER.
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north,” is such a stupid statement. There’s no other way to put it.
Again, these storms are a frequent occurrence in the Northeast in the Winter (I grew up in NH and now live outside of DC). BUT, for Baltimore/Washington to actually get any snowfall from these storms requires…wait for it! – UNSEASONABLY COLD WEATHER! Just like we had last winter in December and February!
Now I ask you, how are these SNOW storms going to increase in frequency in the WARMING climate!?!? Sigh.
1800 data points on the map (25×72) and using 5.1×10^8 km^2 surface area for the globe gives you 283333km^2 per station… Seems like we need a few more data points. It sure wouldn’t hurt to have some properly located stations in there either.
looking at the colder than average oceans, it is clear that the hottest year claim is extremely unlikely. you simply are not going to have cold oceans and very hot land.
There is a red spot on my place (SH)…I wish it could be real, but, sadly, it is not. So, the above graph is another LIE.
If you are at home right now you can watch the British open live. No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record. Every last one of them is bundled up! It looks like November over there right now. Wool caps, hands in pockets, sweaters, wind breakers and winter coats!
Go on…take a peek…you know you want to….
Lake effect snow strikes Buffalo, NY and Muskegon, MI, but usually peters out within 100 miles of the shoreline.
There is no way that Great Lakes moisture is bringing snow to the Northeast. I live in Lansing, MI, and it can be snowing a foot in Grand Rapids, but we get nothing. You can watch the NOAA weather radar and see the lake effect snow.
So it’s warmer….WHO CARES!
The gradient on the U.S. map seems large at your location. Just go a little north and there is cooling. Thus it is likely that smoothing effects could account for the discrepancy.
What is the source for the U.S. map? I did not see it on the NOAA site. The global dot map is not precise enough to draw any conclusions about your location.
BTW, on the global dot map for Jan-June 2010 it looks like Colorado cooled.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/images/map-blended-mntp-201001-201006.gif
And the cold in Florida???????????
I’m just cherry-pickin’ here…but I counted dots (which I’m qualified to do) and found that there are more dots on the average line and below than there are above. It even looks like there’s more area under the average line than above. Somehow, it doesn’t result in a convincing argument to me that it’s warming, certainly not at a statistically significant rate if at all.
Alright, as a 25% skeptic (and 75% convinced that AGW is a real phenomenon), let’s suppose that the measurements (even with some errors) as correct, and that 2010 is indeed the warmest year on record, if even by a few tenths of a degree. To what would the skeptics attribute this warmth? We are still a few years away from the higher total solar irradiance that the solar max will bring in 2013, and the last El Nino, while strong, was not as strong as 1998. So where is the warmth coming from, if not from AGW caused in increases in GHG? I keep hearing some skeptics say that the world is cooling, etc., but the leveling in the growth of global temps that we HAD seen in the last few years can easily be attributed to the long and deep solar minimum, but now temps seem to be going right back up, just as GCM’s would say will happen with AGW.
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends? (and I think it is a huge cop out to say the measurements are wrong). There’s just too many other global temperature measurements that validate the general upward trends to think that every independent weather observer is also wrong, such as this one from Germany:
http://www.meteo.uni-koeln.de/meteo.php?show=En_We_Ue
If anything makes me skeptical about the skeptics it is the continual drum-beat claiming that all the measurements are wrong or that it’s all UHI, or the satellites are calibrated right, or the data has been manipulated in odd ways, etc.
Again, suppose the data is essentially correct, and globally speaking, 2010 turns out to be the warmest year on record. What scientific reason would AGW offer for this?
In my last post, this is the full German link I meant to give:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
Tell me why this data is not to be believed? And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?
The above graph is absolutely false!. Everyone check own closest red spot and say if it is correct right here. This will be a kind of “fake red spots” investigation.
If single climate sampling stations are found, when the record is examined, to currently be ‘warmed’ by some mysterious statistical manipulation to ‘bring them into line’ with other stations a considerable distance away from them, what faith can lay people such as I have in the record as stated by the national and international organisations responsible for compiling the various charts of the earth’s warming or cooling. I have had experience of surprisingly different microclimates in a small geographical area that has little difference in altitudebetween sea level and 100 metres above mean sea level at high tide between each microclimate. The concept of an ‘average temperature’ in such an area may be statistically valid, but for all practical purposes is an absolute nonsense. Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
The “hottest 6 months” is making the rounds in German news already. So it’s well orchestrated; most news from the English speaking part of the world takes 3 or more days to arrive here. This one was obviously blasted through the news agencies with a big “urgent” mark on it.
Considering that NOAA is an advocacy group (I’ll never forget Lubchenco’s schooling of Congress with her classic chalk in vinegar experiment), I’m not surprised by the data for the year-to-date on its site that spans from 1880 to 2010 (click for hi-rez image):
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats_sup.html
It’s also interesting to compare its June temperature departure map for the US with the degree-days map for Jan to June 2010:
http://uspest.org/wea/gis/NV_50us.png
Tom Rowan says : ‘If you are at home right now you can watch the British open live. No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record. Every last one of them is bundled up! It looks like November over there right now. Wool caps, hands in pockets, sweaters, wind breakers and winter coats!’
Actually, we (in GB) have had a couple of very good summer weeks – but this has now reverted to average or sub-average temps for the time of year. Of course, we had a very long, very white and totally wretched winter, followed by a very late and rather poor spring. Indeed, our spring and the pollen season (I get hay-fever alas) has been about three weeks late – despite our ultra-leftie British (Yes, it still uses that Obama-unfriendly term in its official name, despite most beeboids swooning at the mention of the great one!) Broadcasting Corporation keeping on telling us how our seasons are getting earlier and earlier!
Again, these storms are a frequent occurrence in the Northeast in the Winter (I grew up in NH and now live outside of DC). BUT, for Baltimore/Washington to actually get any snowfall from these storms requires…wait for it! – UNSEASONABLY COLD WEATHER! Just like we had last winter in December and February!
Now I ask you, how are these SNOW storms going to increase in frequency in the WARMING climate!?!? Sigh.
_____________
Did you miss our entire discussion on the cold weather this past winter when it was actually occurring? Are you aware that Greenland and other parts of the Arctic were seeing record warmth this past winter? You may want to do a bit of research about the Arctic Oscilation and the Arctic Dipole Anomaly to understand where all the really cold air came from last winter. There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.
I’ve noticed the same thing. NOAA anomaly maps are consistently 1-3 degrees too high along the Front Range.
Who gives a stuff what NOAA say, nobody believes a damn word they say, the T record is bent.
What if (statistically it is the ‘warmest’ ever in the history of the universe?) it don’t mean a damn thing in the northern hemisphere, Temperatures are off, get used to cold winters and never mind what the ‘experts’ tell you, three years ago the experts were telling us, how everything in the financial world was “hunky dory!”
Same difference, economics/climatology it is all in the end guess work because we do not understand the basic underlying drivers of climate temperatures and in the financial world the capabilities (incapability) of man’s stupidity and greed.
The oceans and the sun, their interaction on climate……….lets just concentrate on understanding them, man-made CO2 is a non sequitur.
Tom Rowan says: July 16, 2010 at 11:30 am
No one told the Brits it is the hottest year on record.
I lived in UK for a while now, most of the time summer is pleasantly cool, none of the continental Europe’s deep-fry. I think it is the Arctic factor:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic-factor.htm
Psychiatrists would call it a projection from the subconscious of NOAA. 🙂
stevengoddard says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:53 am
I’ve noticed the same thing. NOAA anomaly maps are consistently 1-3 degrees too high along the Front Range.
____________
So if the error is consistent, and didn’t just start this year, then the warmth of 2010 must be correct because it is relative to the other years with the consistent error. And there is no NOAA involved in these independently taken temperatures from C. Europe that go back to 1761, and essentially match the same kind of global temperature rise that others are reporting:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/Klimastatistik/baurtempjahrgross.gif
These NOAA averages are an example of anti-synoptic reality garbage that State AGW proponents produce in order to fit the reality into their agenda.
R Gates writes:
“Did you miss our entire discussion on the cold weather this past winter when it was actually occurring? Are you aware that Greenland and other parts of the Arctic were seeing record warmth this past winter? You may want to do a bit of research about the Arctic Oscilation and the Arctic Dipole Anomaly to understand where all the really cold air came from last winter. There’s only so big of a cold air “reservoir” over the Arctic at any given time in the winter, and if it’s unseasonably cold somewhere in the south, then it also has to be unseasonably warm somewhere in the north– as it was this past winter.”
If only you had a clue about atmospheric circulation you’d avoid posting such rubbish.