By Steve Goddard
As La Niña takes hold in South America, we are seeing something I’m not sure I have ever seen before. Temperatures in some parts of the Andes Mountains of Bolivia are forecast to average below -5C this week. The entire country of Bolivia is located inside the Tropic of Capricorn.
Closeup below :
Temperatures are 6-10C below normal in much of South America.
The image below shows Unisys SST anomalies combined with NCEP forecast anomalies. Note how sea surface temperatures affect the land temperatures.
Our friend Joe Romm is very focused on the Northeastern US, but there is a whole big world out there.
Cold Weather Proves Killer in Parts of South America (Source: Time newsfeed)
Strange but true: despite blazing hot temperatures, sometimes in the triple digits, sweeping across the United States, the opposite is true in much of South America where a cold front has actually claimed more than 400 lives in parts of Peru and Argentina. The temperatures, which have hovered in the upper 30s in the southern part of the continent qualify as a rather typical winter by North American standards. But in some places, like the Andes mountains the thermometer has dropped as low as -11 degrees F and decimated alpaca and cattle herds. The usually subtropical areas affected are particularly vulnerable because the populations are largely poor, live in conditions that are not equipped for cold weather and the governments do not have the infrastructure to handle winter conditions.
As La Niña develops, climate alarmists will soon be seeking shelter from the storm.
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Did you really mean -11F . That’s -24C?
Keep up the good work…
[that’s from the news article excerpt, not the post author ~mod]
Nice to see, parts of Russia are 7 degrees C too warm, and in parts of south America it’s 7 degrees C too cold. Our world keeps amazing us, and will be…
Seppie.
Unusually warm weather is caused by AGW. Unusually cold weather is caused by AGW. Unusually wet weather is caused by AGW. Unusually dry weather is caused by AGW.
Don’t forget that NYC froze in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.</i?
But that’s weather, it has nothing to do with climate…sarc off.
Not one word about the plight of those suffering from cold has been noted in the MSN of Australia, how odd. The BBC in England are talking up temperatures in Russia, curiouser and curiouser. Has the world gone mad?
Look closely at the SST anomoly map and notice the plume of VERY cold water off the coast of South America – it’s running 5C below average. The NINO 1-2 regions are already at -3C so we’re looking at possibly a very strong La Nina forming very quickly. It wasn’t long ago some forecasters were predicting a La Nina was unlikely. In fact I think I read it right here on WUWT!
Hmmm….. I wonder if this will make the front page of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, like the `we are all going to fry’ story they ran yesterday. Or the ‘we are all going to fry’ story on our top news station in Maritime Canada, CTV.
Our main newspaper ran a two paragraph comment, placed about 20 pages into the paper, on the cold in South America.
I am amazed at the comments of `scientists’ who release results of studies that they have undertaken. Without exception, even when the research has extremely tenuous relations to anything climatic, they always link what they see to climate change. As a scientist my self it drives me crazy.
But then again. All my funding and work is focused or `sold’ based on climate change and ‘accelerating (?) rates of sea level rise’. I would add more on that topic but depending who read this I would need to fear for my job. Actually, I wouldn’t say even this much except that by the time the paper work and appeals were completed I would have taken early retirement anyway. I need to get out and make an honest living!
The indicators begin to stack up. The Antarctic Oscillation at a record high will not provide resistance to the equatorial trade winds that are essential for a strong La Nina. The North Atlantic Oscillation will most likely go neg and permit Arctic winds to flow south as the PDO gives strong backup…. get ready for a big one in the north this winter.
It is not only La Nina I think. My own thoughts based only on observations is that somehow, probably linked with this solar minimum, there is less “mixing” in the atmosphere making summers warmer and winters colder for the respective hemispheres but also inside the hemispheres. Hotspots like eastern VS the heart of Russia or the mediterranean tend to keep undisturbed hot for a long time and located close to the heart of summer. Vice versa for winter. South America as well as South Africa and Australia and New Zealand have a cool winter as well as we had in the Northern Hemisphere and I have few doubts we well get again this year.
The NOAA SST graph is maybe intentionally graded to train the mind towards heat. A 0.1 anomaly gives a hot yellow color. The Unisys example is more subjective.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom_inv.gif
Seppie says:
July 30, 2010 at 3:56 am (Edit)
Nice to see, parts of Russia are 7 degrees C too warm, and in parts of south America it’s 7 degrees C too cold. Our world keeps amazing us, and will be…
Interesting. Those locations are on diametrically opposite parts of the globe.
wayne Job: “Has the world gone mad?” No, just crooked.
I spent a few days in the Bolivian capital La Paz in 1998. It’s a beautiful place, at about 12-13000ft above sea level, with the clearest air I’ve ever seen. I then spent 4 weeks in a tent in primeval jungle in the foothills of the Andes. An incredible experience.
Record hheat and permanent droughts in the southwest according to Joe Romm in january 2009. We have pleasant record cold in southern California that save electric also. Why can’t that be reported on the biased blogs?
There is likely to be a significant La Nina. That is a fact. There was a La Nina in 2007/08. We get cooler conditons during a La Nina. None of this is in dispute.
However the question is – how much cooler will it get. Will the UAH temperatures drop to the same levels as during the 1980s or even 1990s. If not then the underlying trend is still likely to be positive. Just as far too much was made of the 2008 La Nina it looks as though we’re going to get the same extravagant claims about this one. I think it is possible that we’ve shifted to phase of more La Ninas/less El Ninos which will clearly dampen (or completely offset) any warming trend but these phases (if they exist) will end and a new warmer phase will begin.
I don’t know, what you are actually doing.
But I am preparing for another VERY cold winter ahead.
I’m going to try to preempt the “balance of energy” or other similar comments. There is no balance of energy except an equilibrium over the long run. If it gets ridiculously cold in South America it is not because energy disappeared there and magically reappeared in Russia. The only minor exception to this rule is that there are probably slightly warmer areas around Antarctica where this cold came from. Not balancing, but just part of a weather pattern that draws the colder air north.
Interesting too is that, I suppose because of the cold temps in the Southern Hemisphere, that the ASU Sat temperatures have been roughly .2-.25F below temperatures in July of 09 every day this month. In Jan – Jun the opposite was true.
In the first picture, it looks like there’s a second plume of cold water, running north-by-northeast at the Baja peninsula. According to this forecast, the western side of the peninsula is predicted to have temperatures some 30-40 degrees (Fahrenheit) lower than the eastern side (73 in Ensenada versus 112 in Mexicali or 102 in San Felipe). It also describes the coastal weather as “still darn chilly”.
I know, it’s weather, not climate. Still interesting, though.
“Has the world gone mad?”
In a way, yes, although what’s actually happened is worse than that, since it has been an intentional decision by the people responsible. Around the world the MSM allowed itself to become an appendage and a propaganda arm of the political left, and the political left has allowed itself to be hooked into the global warming narrative since they 1) find it attractive and 2) they need the money it would provide to finance a raft of social engineering dreams that can’t be financed any other way.
It’s not about the science – it has never been about the science. Which is why we are now at the stage where people who probably even know better themselves, like the BBC reporters, are intentionally slanting the news to favor their political narrative because they fear the loss of power and standing for the political forces they support that will ensue once this narrative falls apart.
They’re all now at the end stages of an “in for a dime, in for a dollar” bet. They have now accepted that they would rather burn the credibility of every institution they control rather than give in now, even if that means destroying their institutions in the process. In this way, this is just a reflection of the much wider crisis our society is in – virtually all of our major institutions are now controlled by true nihilists, people who would rather see everything they control destroyed, even entire countries, before they will accept political defeat. And somewhere deep they still hang onto the child’s hope that if they just wish for something hard enough, the world they dream will magically appear.
This is not a “sustainable” situation, we all sense that – there is a great reckoning coming. In fact it is almost upon us.
Not much has been said about it but the contrast in temperatures between hot summers in one part of the world and cold winters in the other is a negative feedback due to T to the fourth power in Planck’s radiation law. With the la Niña (regrettably) global temperatures may get below what we experienced after Mt. Pinatubo cooling event. This could become a very rude wakeup call for some activists I believe.
“As La Niña develops, climate alarmists will soon be seeking shelter from the storm.”
Why don’t you just stick with the phenomenon itself and leave this kind of stupid remarks away? I like to read critical thoughts about the so called AGW, but this kind of comments makes it hard to return to this blog… Generally I hate the division about “climate-alarmists” and “climate sceptics”. Like it’s black or white. I’ll stick to gray and look for both sides.
Thanks Steve,
Looks like it’s going to be a frigid winter this year!
I guess “Global Averaging” doesn’t have quite the scary tinge to it as “Global Warmimg”.
I can see that the predicted anomaly is well below average but the mountains in Bolivia do get very cold normally. -20 -> -25 degrees C can be normal compared to a daytime temperature of 15->20.
It is definitely one of those places where I wonder what is the point of an ‘average’ temperature when it can vary by about 5 degrees in an hour. The icy old nights at 4500m altitude do have fantastic stars though..
All that leftover whitewash from the Climategate investigations that was used to paint poured the mountains of Peru to slow the melting of glaciers must be working.
Tallbloke, is Russia in the tropics?
I note the recent outburst of “scientifice reports” in the media of “it really is worse than we thought” is timed with a warm July in the Northern hemisphere. What happened to those reports for the previous two years? ..or next year if Jo Bastardi is correct?
I’m expecting a very strong La Niña, perhaps the strongest ever registered, as a rebound from the quite strong El Niño that we have suffered in 2009-10 in a period with very very low solar activity. My bet is between -1,8 and -2,2 by February 2011. And I expect La Niña conditions to stay until 2012.
I’m no specialist about ENSO, but I predicted the El Niño we just enjoyed quite accurately as early as November 2008, when everything was pointing to a recovery of La Niña conditions instead. I even correctly forecast its 1,8 top strength…
Carrying on with Tallbloke’s observation about the cold and hot anomolies being on opposite sides of the globe, a couple of unscientific but logical (hopefully) thoughts. 1. cold south of the equator hot in Russia– then cold in russia and hot on the tropic of capricorn– isn’t that how global averages are made? 2. as the sun is the sole source of heat for the earth, doesn’t solar variability have to have some effect on global temperatures? 3. doesn’t the rapid ocean self cleaning (bacteria love that crude oil– yum) after the BP disaster show that earth’s natural functions drive conditions to the mean i.e. primarily negative feedbacks? 4. as the oceans are the substantial majority of the earth’s surface, and the total mass and heat content of the oceans dwarf the atmosphere, by definition the oceans drive climate, not the other way round? 5. the AGW alarmists demand that we drop all skepticism and accept their theories, isn’t that the same as the religious demand for faith based acceptance of the truth? isn’t that the opposite of science?
Steve,
Cherry picking as always Steve. What about the massive heatwave presently sweeping Russia, the largest country on Earth. Thousands of people have died (okay–some had a little too much to drink) and 23% of all crops have failed. Have not heard a peep from you on this. It was much like your reporting on last year’s cold winter in (parts of) the U.S and Europe, while the rest of the world baked in well above temperatures.
MJK
The liars at NASA must be worried. They have already started preparing the propanda that 2010 is “on track” to be the hottest year on record. Looks like that`s going to be another spectacular FAIL !
Pitty we dont have any politicians brave enough to stand up and say “If 2010 does not turn out to be the hottest year – then those at GISS/NOAA who predicted this will lose their jobs”
wayne Job,
Don’t worry – Australia is going to be freezing too.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html
It’s cold up at high altitudes — shocker! The latitude seems kinda irrelevant when you’re talking about such high elevations. I mean this about roughly the same distance from the equator as the Himalayas, which are not exactly thought of as a (sub-)tropical paradise.
mjk,
Large areas of Russia are experiencing record cold.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
The MSM doesn’t talk about this, do they?
Johnny D
Do you understand what an “anomaly” is?
It’s a good thing that Henson and his buddies removed those pesky high altitude temperature stations from inclusion in their datasets. Otherwise these low temperatures would be a real problem for the next “Hottest Ever” headline.
/sarc on/
I don’t care how cold it gets, it’s the hottest year on the record..
/sarc off/
SC22 had 7 years of sunspots above 30 -> 1987.5 to 1994.5.
—– Starting 10 years later:
SC23 had 7.5 years of sunspots above 30 -> 1997.75 to 2005.25.
—– Starting(?) 13 years later:
SC24 has 0 years of sunspots above 30 -> 2010.5 to ?????
—– Note: NOAA has a blip at 31 for several days. Layman’s and SIDC less than 20 for the same time interval.
If (since?) sunspots show increased sun activity, then we are experiencing an unprecedented lack of activity!
The Pacific has given up the stored heat from SC22, SC23. Now we will feel the effects of SC24. A La Nina is equivalent to a cooling Pacific. With less heat traveling from South America to the Poles, look for very cool Western US coastal temperatures. Unfortunately, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere; very, very cold temperatures and an increasing ice build around Antarctica (sea ice).
“Around the world the MSM allowed itself to become an appendage and a propaganda arm of the political left”
wws, it’s just the nature of the news business.
It’s the left that is always generating disasters, and bad news sells.
One puzzling anomaly (correct usage, ie. oddity) is the strip of +2 to +4C warm “anomaly” (incorrect usage, ie. delta T) at the northern tip of Chile, despite a particularly chilly bit of water just off the coast there.
mjk
Check the sea ice page and you’ll see that the 80N temps are running below average.
In context and perspective, Climate Cultists’ bloviations “aren’t right– they aren’t even wrong.” From Monbiot to Romm to Schmidt, nevermind the Green Gang’s duplicitous Cargo Cultists such as Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al., AGW propagandists broadcast only asininities, mere bumpf.
In any case: Given an increasingly probable “aggravated La Nina”, could anyone project a 6 – 9 month cycle of rough northern and southern hemispheric temperatures through next spring? Much like seasonal aggregates of Arctic and Antarctic ice conditions, it’d be interesting to see how non-linear extrapolations play out over the next year or so.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:23 am
Steve, thanks for this link. But once again it proves my point about your habit of cherry picking regions. Looking at the Global map it would be clear to an “objective person” that the majority of areas (including most of Russia) have experienced warmer temperatures over this past week.
MJK
By my reconing this is the fourth consecutive cool winter in the southern hemisphere, while we have had three. This coming winter in the north could be very interesting, ( our forth coming up?) The SST along both north and south america’s west coast is below normal and it is almost August. I was near Machu Pichu when the heaviest rains in 35 years washed out the roads, bridges and train tracks. That puts it back to when the expert scientists were talking about global cooling.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:12 am
Don’t worry – Australia is going to be freezing too.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html
Nice pick up Steve, as well the jet stream maps are suggesting a big dump of cold air in the south on Sunday, expect plenty of snow.
mjk says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:05 am
“Steve,Cherry picking as always Steve.”
MJK, what Steve is doing here, is mentioning stuff that is NOT in MSN.
Why mentioning the heatwave in russia, when the whole point is that you can read about that in MSN? Every day?
When the jet streams move equatorward as a result of a contraction of the equatorial air masses at a time when the ocean surfaces are transferring energy less quickly to the air then they have more room to swing about latitudinally. ‘Loopiness’, someone called it.
Hence the cold air flow into South America from the South Pole and the hot air flow into Russia from North Africa.
The thing is that more latitudinal ‘loopiness’ means the air is trying to transfer energy faster from equator to poles but it’s degree of success depends on the contemporaneous state of the polar oscillations.
When the polar oscillations are negative as now the polar high pressure cells sink equatorward and limit the poleward transfer of energy so helping to mitigate the global (as opposed to regional) rate of energy loss to space. So negative polar oscillations help to mitigate the cooling effect of La Nina and supplement the warming effect of El Nino.
That is why the recent El Nino gave such a boost to global tropospheric air temperatures despite the quiet sun at the same time as we saw wide regional variability.
When the polar oscillations are positive as during the late 20th Century the polar high pressure cells migrate back poleward and allow a faster rate of energy loss to space.
So positive polar oscillations help to supplement the cooling effect of La Nina and offset the warming effect of El Nino.
The climate reaction depends on the interplay of those four available scenarios:
i) Faster energy transfer from oceans plus positive polar oscillation
ii) Faster energy transfer from oceans plus negative polar oscillation
iii)Slower energy transfer from oceans plus positive polar oscillation
iv)Slower energy transfer from oceans plus negative polar oscillation
We are in the process of moving from a recent scenario ii) to an upcoming scenario iv)
Whether tropospheric air temperatures rise or fall depends on the precise balance of the two opposing forces at any given time.
Since that balance is represented by the average latitudinal position of the air circulation systems we must ascertain that average latitudinal position in order to see whether the globe is warming or cooling as a result of the interplay.
Generally a poleward position means tropospheric warming because energy is coming out of the oceans faster than it is going out to space.
Generally an equatorward position means tropospheric cooling because energy is coming out of the oceans more slowly than it is being lost to space.
The question of ocean warming or cooling is a seperate matter because of the albedo changes complicating the scenario when the main cloud bands move poleward and equatorward. That is beyond the scope of this thread but I have dealt with it elsewhere.
Suffice to say that in the short term the quiet sun (if it continues) will help to mitigate the effect of the coming La Nina whereas it supplemented the effect of the recent El Nino.
The fastest cooling scenario for the troposphere would be the oceans denying energy to the air at the same time as a positive polar oscillation accelerates it to space i.e. scenario iii) above.
The fastest warming scenario for the troposphere would be the oceans supplying more energy to the air at the same time as a negative polar oscillation decelerates the energy flux to space as in scenario ii) above.
In relation to individual ENSO events the effects are short term and quickly reversed but being cumulative over time the effects are more noticeable over the decadal time scales involving PDO switches from positive to negative phases.
We see it most clearly over millennial time scales where we see the swings from MWP to LIA to date.
So during an interglacial the two forces normally offset one another to minimse climate swings apart from those millennial fluctuations and overall total global ice decreases.
During a glaciation the two forces normally supplement one another to increase climate swings way beyond the millennial fluctuations that we are used to and total global ice cover increases because the heavy winter snows over the northern continents do not get to melt away during the summer months.
The current global land distribution dictates a 9:1 ratio in terms of length between ice ages and interglacials.
The coming La Nina will have a strong cooling effect but not yet enough to do more than continue a slow slide from the recent millennial temperature peak and there is a chance that there is a little further to go over the next hundred years or so before the true modern peak is reached.
I don’t expect all this to be accepted uncritically at this point. I’m just putting it on record for future reference.
Any uptick here NOW and AGW is doomed LOL
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice_ext.png
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
The other interesting thing I noticed on the maps recently is the warm water “anomaly” seems to be migrating towards the north pole. Has anyone else noticed that?
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:12 am
wayne Job,
Don’t worry – Australia is going to be freezing too.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp7.html
**********
Australia is not ‘freezing’, on the cool side yes, a bit wetter than normal. Snow? Yes, in the mountains, that’s normal too. About 40% made by snow machines on the ski slopes. Outlook, a southerly outbreak over coming 2 days, snow down to 800m, quite normal in winter. A white x-mas (on the mountain top only) happens about once every 10 years Australia & Tasmania. so cooler yes, cold no and there has been a string of warmer winters. We call it weather.
John Finn says:
July 30, 2010 at 5:14 am
There is likely to be a significant La Nina. That is a fact. There was a La Nina in 2007/08. We get cooler conditons during a La Nina. None of this is in dispute.
However the question is – how much cooler will it get. Will the UAH temperatures drop to the same levels as during the 1980s or even 1990s. If not then the underlying trend is still likely to be positive. Just as far too much was made of the 2008 La Nina it looks as though we’re going to get the same extravagant claims about this one. I think it is possible that we’ve shifted to phase of more La Ninas/less El Ninos which will clearly dampen (or completely offset) any warming trend but these phases (if they exist) will end and a new warmer phase will begin.
I think Steve answered your question in a recent thread with this graph:
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/to-2010-1.png
The graph is hard to argue against…no rise in 10 years, while CO2 continues to climb. You may need to get used to this trend with an expected drop off in temps for the next 30 years, there is no sign of real warming for at least 50 years. Good to see you recognize the upcoming cool phase and also how weak the CO2 contribution really is.
“Looks like its going to be a frigid winter this year!”
OK. If all of you are in agreement that this winter is going to be cold, I will put my faith in your forecasts and start stockpiling good quality pellets for my pellet stove… :^)
despite blazing hot temperatures, sometimes in the triple digits, sweeping across the United States
This isn’t true. It is not hot in the entire US. In California it has been a mild summer with few hot days.
Looks like lots of rain and snow for Washington (the State) and Oregon this winter.
“Do you understand what an “anomaly” is?”
Of course.
Do you understand that “climate alarmists” are worried about climate, not weather?These *short-term* anomalies, both the hot summers in Russia and the US, and the cold winter in the Andes are weather, not climate. The “climate alarmists” are concerned about *long-term* trends. Yes there are people on both sides who use short-term conditions to try to say something about AGW; these people are not actually contributing anything useful to the discussion on climate! (See, for example, your closing sentence about “climate alarmists” in a blog post about *weather*.)
Where is the cold spot just north of Europe coming from? It is surrounded by a lot of red.
@ mjk says July 30, 2010 at 6:05 am:
It was much like your reporting on last year’s cold winter in (parts of) the U.S and Europe, while the rest of the world baked in well above temperatures.
You forgot Asia.
A soft and somewhat naive comment, if I may say so!
“…It’s not climate, it’s weather…”
I keep hearing this, and I find myself, non-climatosophisticate that I am, wondering exactly what he standard of comparison is.
What IS climate, if not the summation of weather trends over time?
Every definition I can find seems to follow this same basic formula:
“Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements and their variations over periods up to two weeks.”
Seems to me this is like saying “that’s not a FOREST… it’s just a bunch of damn trees!”
Appears to me that the only methods used to determine “climate” is to track trends in weather. No?
Can someone set me right, if I’m missing something?
Keep in mind that during a la nina the ocean is actually absorbing heat. Keep an eye on the Western Pacific Warm Pool as this la nina event matures.
I see a lot of blue… the global temperature will take a nose dive… running nose!
Stevengoddard:
I sit on a state environmental board that makes rules for mining. So, I guess I am an environmentalist, a real one, in my own personal opinion, as I try to look at real data before making decisions and my goal is to protect the environment while being as fair as possible to those companies and individuals operating in that environment. Many of those posting on WUWT still just don’t get it.
Example:
At one meeting we determined that remediation of old mine sites was, in certain instances, a negative for wildlife and the land owners, based upon the wild life department’s data, the landowners’ desires for their land use as well as the total lack of any harm being done by not doing certain portions of the remediation. Representatives of the local “Resource Defense” people were against any form of non-remediation. When I asked them why, the answer was that “it would save the mining companies money”. No mention of any possible harm to the environment, as there was none.
The virulenty “green” organizations and their supporters are left wing POLITICAL groups with a cause and they consider others that do not agree with them as the ENEMY. We will never obtain real science from these people as the lie is their main tool and always has been. Disruption of private enterprise, development and the economy is their goal. Out of disaster they reap control, which is what they really seek. Of course, many of the grassroots members of these groups simply have no life and are ignorant and easily used by those promoting their “cause”.
This is why I like the “I’m shocked, shocked….” comment so much whenever we catch these folks in another lie or ignoring facts and real science ( another form of lie).
Maybe it’s a Pacific Coast thing. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
“San Diego is experiencing the coldest July since Franklin Roosevelt was president in 1933. The average monthly temperature, to date [July 27th], is 66 degrees at Lindbergh Field. That’s almost five degrees below normal.”
mjk: July 30, 2010 at 6:05 am
Steve,
Cherry picking as always Steve. What about the massive heatwave presently sweeping Russia, the largest country on Earth. Thousands of people have died…
Got a source for that? A friend in the Ukraine tells me the number of “drinking-while-swimming” drownings are up, but no one is keeling over from heatstroke.
mjk,
The “record warmth” last winter was due primarily to a region of Canada which was running -20C instead of the usual -25C.
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/tlt/medium/global/ch_tlt_2010_01_anom_v03_2.png
Here in NE Oregon 3000ft msl- No tomato summer in progress, been warm in the
day cold at night. Still some snow in the Wallowas and Blue mountains. Expecting severe Thunderstorms today. I thin Nina’s going to have her way with US too…
The planet’s cooling folks. We foolishly convert food to fuel…..
Regarding the recent rash of outbursts claiming that this is going to be “The Hottest Year Evah!!!!”
It’s obvious to even the most casual (but honest) observer that this is scientific nonsense for a number of reasons. (you don’t make “conclusions” about any dataset before half of it has even been measured) However, it DOES make sense politically – this is a big push to establish a political narrative before the fall US elections. Time is running out to accomplish this goal, and they know it. They lost the narrative last December, and the purveyors of this nonsense would do anything to try and get it back.
As I keep saying in various posts – this isn’t about the science, it hasn’t been about the science for a very long time. This is about politics, and this is a purely political push by a group that is so desperate that they don’t even attempt to hide the scientific fraud anymore. And they don’t even care if the fraud is exposed, because they know they have less than 100 days before their game is up for good. They would do anything, tell any lie, manufacture any data, to avoid that end.
How incredibly infuriating it must be to them to realize that the public isn’t listening to them anymore! But they have no choice but to try, because when this finally falls apart everything they believe and trust in, including their own careers, falls with it. And they know this.
And for those who don’t believe that this is a co-ordinated message coming out – have you been reading the Journo-list archives printed by The Daily Caller? Very similar to the Climategate e-mails in that it shows that people supposedly at the top of their crafts (in this case, journalism) casually conspire to betray everything that they are supposed to stand for simply to gain advantage for their favorite political causes. What comes out most clearly is that virtually no one in the business thought it was wrong to lie to the public as long as the correct political goals were achieved. That’s the mindset we’re dealing with.
They make the old Pravda look like a bunch of ham-handed amateurs.
The CAGW propaganda is all coming out now since by this time next year, the CAGW proponents won’t be able to convince anybody of their view:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/glbT2mSea.gif
#
#
John Finn says:
July 30, 2010 at 5:14 am
….However the question is – how much cooler will it get…. I think it is possible that we’ve shifted to phase of more La Ninas/less El Ninos which will clearly dampen (or completely offset) any warming trend but these phases (if they exist) will end and a new warmer phase will begin.
______________________________________________________
Or it could be the start of a cold phase if these papers are correct and then we had better keep pumping out the CO2.
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
“..Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present… As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250-1850 AD), when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent…”
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….”
The Authors do say there will be no returning Ice Age but that is based on the assumption of “continuously increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and no change in the sun.”
However we now know that lately there have been changes in the sun:
During the last century the sun has been very active but with cycle 24 the sun has now gone into a long minimum with “unusual characteristic”s according to NASA and the Solar Dynamics Observatory Mission News
“We want to compare the sun’s brightness now to its brightness during previous minima and ask: is the sun getting brighter or dimmer?”
The answer seems to be dimmer. Measurements by a variety of spacecraft indicate a 12-year lessening of the sun’s “irradiance” by about 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths.”
This is in contrast to what was happening in the solar cycles before cycle 24.
Solar activity reaches new high – Dec 2, 2003
” Geophysicists in Finland and Germany have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a 1000 years. Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy say that their technique – which relies on a radioactive dating technique – is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models (I G Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 211101)
… the Finnish team was able to extend data on solar activity back to 850 AD. The researchers found that there has been a sharp increase in the number of sunspots since the beginning of the 20th century. They calculated that the average number was about 30 per year between 850 and 1900, and then increased to 60 between 1900 and 1944, and is now at its highest ever value of 76.
“We need to understand this unprecedented level of activity,” Usoskin told PhysicsWeb.”
There is also the changes in albedo from cloud cover as measured by the Earthshine Project
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aa/2010/963650.html
“…..The earthshine observations reveal a large decadal variability in the Earth’s reflectance [7], which is yet not fully understood, but which is in line with other satellite and ground-based global radiation data….”
Climate Scientists really do not actually know what is going to happen and the unhealthy focus on just one variable, CO2, could leave mankind unprepared for a very nasty surprise. This is especially true if we have a large volcanic eruption in the right place during a solar grand minimum, a cool ocean cycle and during the wrong point of the precession of the equinoxes.
Local TV news casts here in Southern California are beginning to call this ‘the year without a summer’.
REPLY: That’s remarkable, do you have any links to any reports or video that says that? – Anthony
Fuzzylogic19
You do understand the future tense?
“Australia is going to be freezing”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/cool-summer-la-set-more-record-low-temperatures.html
Cool summer: L.A. sets more low-temperature records
July 29, 2010 | 7:05 am
The unusually cool summer continued in Southern California, where several new record-low temperatures were recorded on Wednesday.
The 68-degree low at Los Angeles International Airport broke the old record low for the day, which was 70 degrees in 1991. Santa Barbara (68) and San Luis Obispo (69) broke records as well.
The temperature at USC, 75, tied the record low set in 1999. UCLA also set a record, 56 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
While the region saw a heat wave a few weeks ago, temperatures have been gradually going down again as July comes to an end.
June was also marked by gloomy conditions and lower-than-normal temperatures.
Johnny D
“Long term trends” have earth cooling 10C since the Jurassic.
Gail Combs says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:14 am
The other interesting thing I noticed on the maps recently is the warm water “anomaly” seems to be migrating towards the north pole. Has anyone else noticed that?
============================================================
Gail, that’s the one thing I keep up with every time.
A few years ago, no one mentioned it. But anyone that kept up with it and watched it, saw it happen.
Jeff says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:20 am
Here you go…
Is La Nina Cooling San Diego’s Weather?
“The average monthly temperature, so far, is 65.9 degrees at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, almost five degrees below normal. This could turn out to be the coolest July since 1933.”
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
When the polar oscillations are negative as now the polar high pressure cells sink equatorward and limit the poleward transfer of energy so helping to mitigate the global (as opposed to regional) rate of energy loss to space.
Steve, the AAO is at a record positive right now: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/aoo.png, this should strengthen the La Nina phase.
The coming La Nina will have a strong cooling effect but not yet enough to do more than continue a slow slide from the recent millennial temperature peak and there is a chance that there is a little further to go over the next hundred years or so before the true modern peak is reached.
Maybe you do not have an understanding of the solar influence during a grand minimum along with the expected ocean cycles? The slide will mean major changes to our climate and lifestyle before recovering slowly in 30 years.
Anthony, FOX 11 had ‘the year without a summer’ comment at the 5:30am weather cast this morning but they only have last night’s forecast on their website. Of course, you also have John Coleman’s forecast from 7/29 up at Icecap.
Jeff
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:13 am
Steve, the Global map you provide of Jan 2010 shows the warming was not just in a “region” of Canada. It was the whole of Canada and what about Asia, Middle East, Africa, Greenland, Western Australia etc. Show that map to any objective person and they will tell you it shows warming over far more of the globe than was cold. Can’t you see that?? Anyway, we had a long debate about it back in January. You continue to cherry pick now–just as you did then.
MJK
“‘Long term trends’ have earth cooling 10C since the Jurassic.”
Your blog post was about weather, then concluded with a non-sequitir on “climate alarmists”. I pointed out that your post was on weather, not climate, so then you jumped straight to the Jurassic. Impressive!
Trouble with that NOAA chart is that it shows anomalies – deviations from the mean – rather than absolute temperatures. This works if you are trying to reduce noise but is quite misleading when you apply it to a periodic phenomenon like like the El Nino. As to the coming La Nina, normally a La Nina lowers the temperature by the same amount that the previous El Nino raised it. This way the mean which bisects the temperature between an El Nino peak and a La Nina valley remains the same. This is what we had in the eighties and nineties but the official curves from NASA, NOAA, and Met Office blot it out and replace it with the rising temperatures of the so-called “late twentieth century warming.” It didn’t happen but NOAA’s State of the Climate 2009 that just came out features it prominently in their Figure 2.3. Satellite data contradict it. They pretend to show satellite data as part of their Figures 2.2 and 2.4 but their trick is to choose a compressed scale and then put so many curves together that you simply cannot see what is shown in the satellite data. What satellites show is an oscillating climate until the super El Nino of 1998 shows up. In four years global temperature then rises by 0.3 degrees Celsius and stabilizes for the next six – the “twenty-first century high.” This was the reason why the first decade of this century was the warmest on record, not some imaginary greenhouse effect. 0.3 degrees is actually not a small amount if you consider that the entire century is supposed to have raised it by 0.6 degrees. Anyway, the twenty-first century high came to an end with the 2008 La Nina and I could see that the oscillating climate we had in the eighties and nineties was back with us. The fact that a La Nina is now on the way proves that I was right. I attributed the twenty-first century high to the large amount of warm water brought over by the super El Nino and was expecting it to slowly decline but this has not happened: the midpoint between the 2008 La Nina valley and the 2010 El Nino peak is pretty much the same as the twenty-first century high was. We have to wait and see what happens before we know what to think about it. There is one thing we can eliminate, however, and that is the greenhouse effect. Work of Miskolczi I have previously cited proves that it is physically impossible.
I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not been bamboozled by the warm-earthers. I also strongly feel that the AGW “scientists” have to assume culpability for these deaths, since the governments and NGOs have only been looking for ( and fudging for) the warm scenario to the neglect of preparing for the more likely cold phase of the cycles.
I wonder how many of the cold deaths in S.A. and Africa recently are also due to malnutrition and the lack of grain that has been hijacked to make booze for cars – the most inefficient and cynical use of food I can think of. I am increasingly seeing the warm-earthers as though they are tantamount to being war criminals, or, at least, facilitators of some really bad actors like Al Gore and his ilk. Regardless of whether or not their intent is innocent.
Governments are unprepared now as never before. Many will perish needlessly from cold and starvation because of this lack of forethought. When it gets too hot, people can jump in the water to cool off. We cannot jump in the water to get warm when it gets too cold.
Interesting how the cold anomaly is to the east of the Andes, and the west coast (next to the colder water) is showing neutral to positive temperatures;
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/wctan8.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/wctan15.gif
What this shows is that in the NH summer the NH heats up and the SH cools down. Its really very, very, simple and extremely normal. LOL
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
You wouldn’t even know there was a Southern Hemisphere if got your weather news from Hansen or the MSM.
Actually La Nina brings cold, dry weather to many places, leading to drought. Cold oceans dry out the African soil, leading to dust being blown into the oceans. Which is a good thing for fisheries since it is iron rich and feeds plankton blooms. Washington and Oregon may find itself with less snow and rain, and quite a few frozen pipes. We need both El Nino’s and La Nina’s to continue the food chain cycles of plenty and famine. Yes, it is a hard roller coaster to ride, but to disrupt it by “seeding” or doing other artificial attempts by humans to get the weather they want, we run the risk of disrupting the food chain.
So take it from an old testament story. During years of plenty, store food, don’t waste it. During years of famine, you will have food to sell.
Steven Goddard: “As La Niña takes hold in South America, we are seeing something I’m not sure I have ever seen before. Temperatures in some parts of the Andes Mountains of Bolivia are forecast to average below -5C this week.”
There are glaciers in Bolivia, so I assume you’re talking about areas where it doesn’t normally drop below freezing.
Jeff
I was in San Jose last week, and temperatures were cold in the afternoon. I found myself often looking for the sunny side of the street to ride my bike on.
I managed to go car free the entire week. I bought the bike on Craigslist and traveled by bike/train all week. I saved $150 by not renting a car – even with purchase of the bicycle and shipping it back to Colorado. Plus I didn’t have to deal with traffic!
I can’t imagine why anyone commutes in a car in the Bay Area.
50 years ago I figure not that many people gave a damn of the weather of Bolivia.
On a second note, can an earth quake really act as a positive feedback to la niña?
@Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
“When the polar oscillations are negative as now the polar high pressure cells sink equatorward and limit the poleward transfer of energy…”
That is the wrong way around.
Have a look when SSW`s occur, that will give you a good clue.
Gail Combs says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:17 am
Or it could be the start of a cold phase if these papers are correct and then we had better keep pumping out the CO2.
==========================================================
Isn’t that the odd part of it?
Obviously CO2 levels have never stopped it from getting colder.
So if CO2 levels can’t stop the planet from getting colder,
how does CO2 have enough effect to warm it?
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:27 am
Johnny D
“Long term trends” have earth cooling 10C since the Jurassic.”
I don’t know what your source was on this but it is correct according to this:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm
And I would note there is not a very good correlation here between CO2 and temperature. Also, if I am not mistaken, quite a good deal of flora and fauna proliferated during these high CO2 periods as well. By the way, good old Wikipedia has the temp the same now as Jurassic +/- 10 degrees.
mjk
You cherry-picked the peak month of the second strongest El Nino on record, and then when that didn’t work – you downgraded your claim from “record temperatures” to “above normal.”
stevengoddard says:
“I can’t imagine why anyone commutes in a car in the Bay Area.”
One word: Convenience. I’ve taken the train from San Jose to Sacramento several times. The fare is pretty close to the cost of gasoline [$28; 120 miles], but the train takes 4 1/2 hours and driving takes only 2 hours. But the train stops along the way and passengers are offloaded to a bus that takes them the rest of the way. Also, when I drive I can come and go any time I want.
Plus, I’m contributing more CO2 to the atmosphere, which makes driving even more beneficial for the environment. And I print out my own carbon offsets — I’m up to 977 Trillion offsets now, so I can continue to emit excess CO2 until 2576.
You are a good person for riding a bicycle, and taking it on a train emits no CO2 — the mere presence of such a green vehicle negates CO2 emissions. Just ask the average eco-wingnut, because they know everything there is to know about Gaia.☺
pat,
The Southern Hemisphere has behaved badly, so GISS disowned it – with the exception of some ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Bob,
You don’t need very cold winter temperatures to form glaciers – they just have to remain cool in the summer.
Johnny D
You claim to know what the “long-term” trends are. Like going back to the MWP?
bubbagyro says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:58 am
I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not been bamboozled by the warm-earthers. I also strongly feel that the AGW “scientists” have to assume culpability for these deaths,…
____________________________________________
You echo my feelings exactly.
What is worse is the starvation hits children the hardest. And that the CAGW fraud was done KNOWING it would cause death just for power and monatary gain. I wonder how Jones and Mann and the rest can sleep with so much blood on there hands.
Perhaps some day we will hear words like these from “climate scientists”
“Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over 12 years, and after 1000 days of official fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me, resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the name of your predecessors, and under your official seal. “
Public Resignation of Davison Budhoo, a senior economist with the International Monetary Fund – 1988
Steve, I was reading a few months ago how BART was pushing people back into their cars in the Bay Area because their car commutes were 20 minutes & BART was taking them 2½ hours for the same trip. The commuters seemed to value sleep in bed & time with the family over the train ride.
Jeff
Smokey
Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco is faster and cheaper than driving, plus you don’t have to park. It is easier to bicycle around San Francisco than drive most places.
Geoff Sharp says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:15 am
I think Steve answered your question in a recent thread with this graph:
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/to-2010-1.png
Perhaps Steve and you could explain this ..
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2010/trend/offset:-0.4/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2010/trend/offset:-0.45/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2010/trend/offset:-0.18/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/trend/offset:-0.25
The trend of all 4 datasets is up – and that’s in a period going from solar max to solar min when we might expect a drop of ~0.1 deg based on the reduction in TSI.
The graph is hard to argue against…no rise in 10 years, while CO2 continues to climb. You may need to get used to this trend with an expected drop off in temps for the next 30 years,
If we have to get used to this trend during a cold period what will we need to get used to during a warm period.
What Happens in South America Won’t Stay in South America
(Sarc On) Now that Co2 has been officially declared a poisonous, carcinogenic, gut-wrenching, product of human pollution, there will soon be EPA declared “Even-Odd Days” and “Breath-Free Days”. On EPA declared “Even-Odd Days” your age in years (even or odd) will determine your ability to breath. On “Breath-Free Days” NO ONE will be permitted to breath for 24 hours. Anyone violating these special, earth-saving, mandatory, federal days will be arrested and their property confiscated and sold at public auction. Of course, this law only applies to citizens of the U.S. and legal residents thereof, diplomatic personnel, foreign spies, and illegal aliens may breath if they wish. “Breath Trading” will NOT be permitted in any way, shape, or form! NO exceptions will be made for anyone, a physician’s statement of ill health will NOT be accepted, there will NO Exceptions –except to Members of Congress and the Executive Branch, Members of the Judiciary are NOT exempted regardless of health or voting record. (Sarc Off)
Please DON’T laugh too hard or long. Save your breath! I wasn’t entirely joking. I have a strange feeling that I’m kind’a, sort’a Psychic;-) No doubt the EPA has similar plans in the works for Water. I think it has something to do with eradicating the anthropogenics (whatever they are) and solving the Global Warming problem before the next Presidential Election.
Bob,
Glaciers in Bolivia are located on isolated peaks between 17,000 and 22,000 feet elevation. The NCEP forecast is showing areas at 12,000 feet below -5C
Pamela Gray says:
July 30, 2010 at 9:32 am
Pam, have there been any attempts to sow iron over the oceans? Seems I recall discussing this very point with a friend of mine several years ago.
Jack
Meanwhile back at the ranch:
The BBC is reporting the disappearance of phytoplankton in the “warming seas” and its down to global warming. The BBC reports warming oceans and the loss of the basis of the seas food chain as a fact when its report is as far from factual as its possible to get, a manufactured scare story spread by a state broadcaster and just one of hundreds it spews out every year.
John Finn
I’d be happy to explain your graph to you. You cherry picked the start date at the peak of a La Nina and your end date at the peak of an El Nino. Thus the trend is going up.
You might want to reread this article.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/02/arctic-ice-increasing-by-50000-km2-per-year/
Pamela Gray – you are right about needing both El Ninos and La Ninas. The world is used to it because we have been living with them ever since the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea. And don’t worry about seeding the oceans being able to interfere – it can’t happen any more than lowering carbon dioxide can lower global temperature.
John,
Now explain why GISTEMP is going up 7X faster than satellite data.
Hot and wet or cold and dry. Expect the propagandists to start focusing on current rainfall patterns and to ignore current temperature trends, e.g. “Droughts caused by CO2: Its worse then we thought!”. When its hot and wet they can talk about the temp and when its cold and dry, the rainfall. They win every time.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:24 am
Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco is faster and cheaper than driving, plus you don’t have to park. It is easier to bicycle around San Francisco than drive most places.
_______________________________________
I used to bike and use the T when I worked in Boston. I would really like to see the types of railcars they had in Europe that allowed bikes on the trains. Maybe they now have them in Boston. Commuter rail and bikes in big population areas certainly make good sense.
“The entire country of Bolivia is located inside [sic] the Tropic of Capricorn.”
Yes, and the entire medium blue zone [<-5°C] shown on your maps is located outside [south of] the Tropic of Capricorn. Please clarify.
John,
I removed the trend lines so that we can see the trick you pulled.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2010/offset:-0.4/plot/gistemp/from:2000/to:2010/offset:-0.45/plot/uah/from:2000/to:2010/offset:-0.18/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/offset:-0.25
Now, let’s do the right thing El Nino peak-to-peak to see just how screwed up GISTEMP is
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.4/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.45/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.18/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.25/trend
“As La Niña develops, climate alarmists will soon be seeking shelter from the storm.”
No they won’t
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17808-climate-myths-any-cooling-disproves-global-warming.html
“In fact, even if the world does cool over the next few years as some predict, it in no way undermines the certainty about long-term warming due to greenhouse gas emissions”
Not even a repeat of the Last Glacial Maximum would convince some people. (It would probably be seen as evidence of AGW).
jorgekafkazar
Look at the closeup image. That is why I provided it. Bolivia has a region at -5-10C.
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/frozentropicscloseup.jpg
Gail Combs
San Jose light rail has bike racks inside all their trains.
John Finn says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:25 am
If we have to get used to this trend during a cold period what will we need to get used to during a warm period.
Warmist whingeing, and trying to “blame” the warmth on man’s evil C02?
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:23 am
mjk,
Large areas of Russia are experiencing record cold.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
The MSM doesn’t talk about this, do they?
Hmm, Record lows? Can’t tell from that link. And gee, that also shows almost no low temperatures in South America…! But still, MJK is correct, a big ongoing weather event and not a peep.
Moscow had a record temperature of 39C (102F) on Thursday, after a summer of record heat. Big fires are killing people too.
stevengoddard,
You’re right about San Francisco WRT parking [horrendously expensive, up to $6/hr in city owned lots], and the ease of getting around on a bike vs a car.
I don’t think getting there is faster or cheaper than by car, though. Mass transit only works well in compact cities like S.F., which is only 7 x 7 miles. But in spread out areas like San Jose, Sacramento, and most other large U.S. cities, mass transit is very inefficient. Its use is not promoted by passengers, but rather, by unions that get top wages for all aspects of construction, maintenance, fare collection, drivers and administration, and by the politicians who get their votes.
San Jose now has a 19th century-style *trolley* system run by government bureaucrats, which is subsidized with over $5 of taxpayer funds per rider on top of the fares. [Two years ago the gov’t Valley Transit Authority bureaucrats took over the bus system from a private, property tax paying company – and the cost of the system promptly doubled, and continues to increase – a big un-legislated tax increase.]
The ridership projections used to sell the original trolley have never been met; not even close [a greenie politician by the name of Rod Diridon was the driving force behind the old timey trolley system. The local daily fishwrap had a naming contest when the slow-motion trolley was being built. My favorite entry: “Diridon’s Urban Money Burner: D.U.M.B.”].
And for some incomprehensible reason the trolley tracks are a different gauge than the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] tracks, which disconnects the entire South Bay system from BART’s East Bay/Oakland/SF line.
That’s what happens when bureaucrats try to run a business. Stay tuned for the approaching Obama/Pelosi/Reid healthcare disaster.
Smokey
I hear you. But the light rail between San Jose and Mountain View works great. I took it several times. I would put my bike on, pop out my Droid, and work on the train. You can get anywhere in Mountain View on a bike within 10 minutes from the train station. What they are missing is WiFi on the trains.
M White
Hansen’s Scenario B has very warm temperatures starting in 2010. They can’t keep hiding forever behind the imaginary future.
There seem to be some big swings between “warmistas” and “sceptics” on this blog.
Calm down people the problem is CO2 and what it means not if ” my colder is better than your warming”.
It’s cold here in central Africa , not insanely so just winter. NYC and Moscow are hot just like summer.
What is the role of man made CO2 in this? Bugger all by measure.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:35 am
M White
I think they’ll try for as long as the politicians want them to. Once our leaders see the electorate looking elsewhere things will probably change
There is a race between the ever-increasing and louder claims of global warming and the simple and undeniable fact that the world climate has entered into a Grand Solar Minimum. Where will be the point of realization by the masses when the relentless drumbeat of the MSM touting the myth of global warming provided by the scienitsts grazing at the trough of public grant money is overtaken by the inevitable cooling – yea, the down right cold and agricultural wrecking temperatures – of at least the next three dacades? Voters of the world awake! You are being taken to the cleaners by tax-crazed, control-hungry politicians in the name of a non-crisis.
Ref – Keith Battye says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:39 am
“There seem to be some big swings between “warmistas” and “sceptics” on this blog….”
________________________________
So true Keith! We definitely need to step back and look at all this climate stuff from a different perspective. I’ve found a graphic that fairly well illustrates just what we’re in for, and that all this talk about warming and cooling is really very childish. I ask everyone to briefly glimpse this graphic and consider once again: “Where we are!”, “Where we’re going!”, and “What we’re in for!” Let’s cool down about Global Warming and Global Cooling once and for all. Please!
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
mjk says:
July 30, 2010 at 6:05 am
Steve,
Cherry picking as always Steve. What about the massive heatwave presently sweeping Russia, the largest country on Earth. Thousands of people have died (okay–some had a little too much to drink) and 23% of all crops have failed. Have not heard a peep from you on this. It was much like your reporting on last year’s cold winter in (parts of) the U.S and Europe, while the rest of the world baked in well above temperatures.
MJK
Talk about cherry picking.
Moscow is a teeny tiny bit of area of “the largest country on Earth”.
The part of the globe where it is heating up most is a very large area where there are no thermometers to read.
Forest fires do not require high near surface atmospheric temperatures to begin burning. Of course, those temperatures rise quickly once a forest begins burning.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:17 am
Gail Combs
San Jose light rail has bike racks inside all their trains.
___________________________________________________________
Great, I spammed Congress with letters about that 15 – 20 years ago.
Should be a “preview” function on this site.
REPLY: I’ve asked wordpress.com (where this site is freely hosted) several times for this feature, I cannot add it. -Anthony
To wws: I agree 100% with your assessment of the current situation. I’m not a scientist, but I can smell a political con job when it’s cooking and AGW is the biggest con job of all time, and could prove to be one of the most expensive. You nailed it so well that I’m repeating your post below. And you’re right; they don’t even care if the fraud is uncovered anymore. The main risk I see now is that a lame-duck Congress goes hog wild and passes an extreme cap and trade law. Then it will be up to the new Congress to defund the effort, not to mention defunding everyone in the EPA involved in regulating CO2. The fastest way to get bureaucrats under control is to cut off their supply of money.
wws says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:16 am
Regarding the recent rash of outbursts claiming that this is going to be “The Hottest Year Evah!!!!”
It’s obvious to even the most casual (but honest) observer that this is scientific nonsense for a number of reasons. (you don’t make “conclusions” about any dataset before half of it has even been measured) However, it DOES make sense politically – this is a big push to establish a political narrative before the fall US elections. Time is running out to accomplish this goal, and they know it. They lost the narrative last December, and the purveyors of this nonsense would do anything to try and get it back.
As I keep saying in various posts – this isn’t about the science, it hasn’t been about the science for a very long time. This is about politics, and this is a purely political push by a group that is so desperate that they don’t even attempt to hide the scientific fraud anymore. And they don’t even care if the fraud is exposed, because they know they have less than 100 days before their game is up for good. They would do anything, tell any lie, manufacture any data, to avoid that end.
How incredibly infuriating it must be to them to realize that the public isn’t listening to them anymore! But they have no choice but to try, because when this finally falls apart everything they believe and trust in, including their own careers, falls with it. And they know this.
And for those who don’t believe that this is a co-ordinated message coming out – have you been reading the Journo-list archives printed by The Daily Caller? Very similar to the Climategate e-mails in that it shows that people supposedly at the top of their crafts (in this case, journalism) casually conspire to betray everything that they are supposed to stand for simply to gain advantage for their favorite political causes. What comes out most clearly is that virtually no one in the business thought it was wrong to lie to the public as long as the correct political goals were achieved. That’s the mindset we’re dealing with.
They make the old Pravda look like a bunch of ham-handed amateurs.
Just for the record, can someone keep track of the GISS temperature records for South America this month, so we can see how they evolve over the months and years ahead.
Pascvaks says:
July 30, 2010 at 12:29 pm
…So true Keith! We definitely need to step back and look at all this climate stuff from a different perspective. I’ve found a graphic that fairly well illustrates just what we’re in for……
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
A bit of explanation please.
The left side is the present , correct?
The zero line is the current global average temperature ?
If that is true we are a wee bit cold at present – as in near glacial temps are we not?
re: sowing the oceans with iron.
The oceans are really, really big. Like, Big. Man couldn’t seriously affect the oceans even if he ground up every car in every junkyard in the world and dropped them all in. It’s just too big!
Probably the only way to seriously affect the oceans with iron would be to vaporize something like 100 mile diameter iron asteroid immediately above the ocean and allow that to percolate in.
Although I kind of suspect that might make the warming problem for the planet quite acute for a few thousand years.
I wonder how 400 plus people dying from cold weather isn’t a bigger story than a few days of really nice weather that hardly kills any one.wuwt
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
==============================
Good stuff as always. How’s that book coming along, Stephen?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
adrian smits says:
July 30, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I wonder how 400 plus people dying from cold weather isn’t a bigger story than a few days of really nice weather that hardly kills any one.wuwt
————————————————————————————————
I leave you with a comment posted on a UK Daily Telegraph blog by “HostileLogic”
“Journalism, once known as a teller of truth and a bulwark against tyranny, was known as the 4th estate. Now it has morphed into the 5th column and has become a threat to our freedoms.
The press was once a magnificent lady. Now she is a malignant prostitute.”
stevengoddard says: “Look at the closeup image. That is why I provided it. Bolivia has a region at -5-10C.”
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/frozentropicscloseup.jpg
I did look at it and (because it’s one of your posts) several times. (1) The Bolivian blue region is very small; (2) It’s light blue, which, per the legend, corresponds to 0°C to -5°C. There is no significant area of Bolivia shown between -5 to -10°C. It’s just a forecast, so I think there’s not a lot to it, even if you use a microscope. Let’s see the actual data when it’s available. Or photos of people ice skating on that lake that might get me snipped if I mention its name.
wws says:
“As I keep saying in various posts – this isn’t about the science, it hasn’t been about the science for a very long time. This is about politics, and this is a purely political push by a group that is so desperate that they don’t even attempt to hide the scientific fraud anymore. And they don’t even care if the fraud is exposed, because they know they have less than 100 days before their game is up for good. They would do anything, tell any lie, manufacture any data, to avoid that end. ”
Bullseye. Said the same thing myself now in these posts several times. But sites like this help to expose the lies.
jorgekafkazar
Exactly what I said.
“Temperatures in some parts of the Andes Mountains of Bolivia are forecast to average below -5C this week. “
“savethesharks says:
July 30, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
==============================
Good stuff as always. How’s that book coming along, Stephen?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA”
Thanks, Chris.
I’m still doing the day job so no chance of a book.
However if I’m proved right in due course the record of my contribution is spread far and wide and could well be collated to make an interesting story.
“Ulric Lyons says:
July 30, 2010 at 9:38 am
@Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
“When the polar oscillations are negative as now the polar high pressure cells sink equatorward and limit the poleward transfer of energy…”
That is the wrong way around.
Have a look when SSW`s occur, that will give you a good clue.”
Yes Ulric I know that’s your view and some of the time on short term events you may see enough of a correlation to suit you.
However to explain multidecadal and millennial changes both logic and physics suggest that I have it the right way round.
Unfortunately the available data is not good enough so we just have to wait and watch to resolve the issue.
Earlier on, Fred N. posted a link to 3-month-seasonal CFS forecasts from NOAA. They also have monthly forecasts. For the next 6 months, see…
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst/images3/glbT2mMon.gif for that forecast. For comparison, see also the archived forecast from 3 years ago at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst_history/200708/images/glbT2mMon.gif Remember the stir that January 2008 caused, with Hadley’s anomaly at only +.053 and UAH and RSS going negative? It looks like January 2011 will be January 2008 on steroids.
This is *NOT* a good thing. Remember the rice shortages and export embargos and high prices of that time? It’ll hit crisis levels. With PDO-caused cooling for the next quarter century, we may have hit “peak food”, analagous to “peak oil”. I’m afraid of food wars in the next decade.
“Geoff Sharp says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:44 am
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
When the polar oscillations are negative as now the polar high pressure cells sink equatorward and limit the poleward transfer of energy so helping to mitigate the global (as opposed to regional) rate of energy loss to space.
Steve, the AAO is at a record positive right now: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/aoo.png, this should strengthen the La Nina phase.”
Geoff, the AAO (Antarctic Oscillation) index is more heavily affected by oceanic events due to more oceans in the southern hemisphere so the current short lived AAO spike is a consequence of the recent El Nino. I did say that what matters is the GLOBAL balance between solar and oceanic influences. Only if the jets are shifted latitudinally is there a significant change to the speed of the hydrological cycle and that short term AAO peak doesn’t seem to have done it just yet.
If the AAO index were to remain highly positive despite a La Nina event then I would attach more weight to your observation. Short term spikes need to be interpreted in the light of the longer term trend which does appear to have peaked even in the southern hemisphere.
I agree with you that a persistent positive AAO and AO (Arctic Oscillation) would enhance any La Nina effect
The AO being less affected by oceanic behaviour due to the northern hemisphere land masses I would expect it to lead any response to a change in solar activity levels and with the northern hemisphere jets going less poleward than they did during late 20th Century El Nino events I still judge that a solar induced (quiet sun) reduction in energy loss to space process has begun in the troposphere despite that El Nino and the consequent AAO spike.
I am grateful to you for pointing out that the response of the AAO to the solar/oceanic balancing act differs to some degree from the AO response. That is useful to me.
Could anybody here comment on the expected effects of this year’s predicted strong La Nina on summer rainfall in eastern and northeastern Australia? Aside from the generalisation that there should be higher rainfall in those areas (eg. from Aust. bom), I would good to have some idea of how certain this is, or how unpredictable it might be due to dependence on the erratic development and track of tropical cyclones.
There was certainly unusually heavy summer rainfall in inland Queensland last summer. A lot of the inland routes across Coopers Creek have been inaccessible for months now, and the effects of the flooding are being felt all the way south to Lake Eyre in South Australia – http://www.lakeeyreyc.com/Status/latest.html#bottom (enjoy the Landsat of a typical inland Australian Landscape: sief dunes and salt lakes). With another summer of heavy rains up in Queensland , Lake Eyre may even fill, as it does every 25 years or so.
If anyone can offer their expertise, I would very much appreciate it.
With thanks in advance,
Larry Kirk
Where I live in Australia we are having a cold winter, the second in a row. There has been less snow in the mountains, but we have had more, colder, and earlier frosts. I don’t expect every winter to be the same, though. I wonder how GISS and the CSIRO determine how ‘2010 is the hottest year ever’ which they seem to keep saying. How do they make this measurement? Where do they stick the thermometer? I can see that the number of temperature reporting stations used has been drastically reduced, and also that many of them are situated on airfields and near asphalt or air conditioners. Their output must be nonsense.
It seems to me that the only way to measure the GLOBAL temperature (and surely that’s what the ‘G’ in AGW stands for) would be to use a radiometer responding to all wavelengths at a distance of about 100,000 km in space. Its field would cover almost a whole hemisphere of the Earth. From this the energy flux could be measured over a long period – of course it would vary from hour to hour and day to day – and then this could be converted, using (I think) the Stephan-Boltzmann law relating radiation and temperature.
Nobody can say here and now what such an instrument might show!
stevengoddard says: “Glaciers in Bolivia are located on isolated peaks between 17,000 and 22,000 feet elevation. The NCEP forecast is showing areas at 12,000 feet below -5C”
Thank you for the clarification.
stephan says:
July 30, 2010 at 9:26 am
What this shows is that in the NH summer the NH heats up and the SH cools down. Its really very, very, simple and extremely normal. LOL
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
=============================================================
You linked to a sea surface temperature map. But you were talking about land temperatures? Also, the tempratures in South America are not 6-10C below summer temperatures but they are 6-10C below normal winter temperatures. Also, the Northern Hemisphere is not heating up. There are only few areas that are hot. Everywhere else is having mild temperatures, even cool.
These cooling temperatures are beginning to show in the data sets, except the American government data sets. Those will still show record heat. But those are government temperature data sets. Those show what the politics of Washington are not the temperature of the earth.
Jeff says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:23 am
Steve, I was reading a few months ago how BART was pushing people back into their cars in the Bay Area because their car commutes were 20 minutes & BART was taking them 2½ hours for the same trip. The commuters seemed to value sleep in bed & time with the family over the train ride.
Jeff
============================================================
That story you tell is exceptionally wrong. You may need to look carefully over what you wrote. You will find errors.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:24 am
“Smokey
Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco is faster and cheaper than driving, plus you don’t have to park.”
=========================================================
I like to take 280. I go 65 all the way. 101 is usually awful, stop and go all the way. And 280 is beautiful, especially when the fog is creeping over the hills. But I do agree about the parking in San Francisco. Hard to find and you constantly feed the meters.
Walter Dnes says:
July 30, 2010 at 3:59 pm
This is *NOT* a good thing. Remember the rice shortages and export embargos and high prices of that time? It’ll hit crisis levels. With PDO-caused cooling for the next quarter century, we may have hit “peak food”, analagous to “peak oil”. I’m afraid of food wars in the next decade.
_____________________________________________________________________
It does not help that the grain traders convinced governments to do away with grain reserves setting the world up for massive famine in the case of major crop failures. Think 1930’s Dust Bowl
The North American Export Grain Association: Joint Letter with NGFA to President Bush, Arguing Against a Global Reserve Grain
http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
… [Amstutz] represented the culmination of this “free market” ideology by calling for the elimination, over 7 years, of all price floors and grain reserves….
Grain trader Dan Amstutz (VP of Cargill) wrote the “freedom to fail” farm act of 1996 getting rid of the US grain reserve: http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/95/15revie.htm
And Amstutz wrote the AoA – World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture:
” Public storage programmes are a commonly used means of reducing volatile food prices. Yet many of the big producer countries have reduced their holdings, in part because they are expensive to maintain, but also because of disciplines introduced by the AoA; its rules discourage public stockholding. The effect has been significant: for example, between 1991 and 1999, European Commission expenditure on storage fell from 18.3 percent of total Common Agricultural Policy costs to 4 percent….
Global stocks to use ratios, used by FAO to measure grain reserves in case of harvest failures, are at low levels by recent historical standards. So why has diminished supply not been reflected in higher, or at least stable, prices?… At least part of the answer seems to lie in the market power of transnational agribusiness….”
http://www.foodgrainsbank.ca/uploads/fjt_invisible.pdf
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends … very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008 http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2008/0104.html
What is happening in the South vs North is repeated each solstice.
There is an escalation each time. That is the pattern we in the N. Hemisphere need to be prepared for.
Don’t look for anyone to do it for you, especially not the Talking Heads or the Govt. which have thier heads buried in hot sands.
-20°C at Mazocruz, Puno, Peru:
Low temperatures in Puno have already killed 42 children
Violence climate . Cold has withered pastures and crops , as well as frozen streams. And in the Ica region has recorded more than 49 000 cases of respiratory infections.
The cold wave is sweeping the highlands of the country. In the Puno region at least 42 children died of pneumonia since the beginning of this season. In addition , low temperatures have destroyed the grasslands and frozen streams.
As reported by residents in the district of Masocruz Puna , province of Collao, on the last Monday there have been 22 degrees below zero, severely affecting all living in this town . ” This is the largest ice in recent years ( …) The alpaca livestock dying for lack of pasture and water, “he said.
Also reported that, so far, the authorities have given their support for , such as coats or other material support to overcome the intense cold.
Ica also affects
But the low temperatures also reached the Peruvian coast. This week in the Ica District Ocucaje the temperature dropped to three degrees Celsius and in the center of the region arrived at six degrees. The Regional Health Bureau reported that in the region 49.800 reported cases of respiratory infections.
http://www.larepublica.pe/archive/all/larepublica/20100717/20/node/278864/todos/13
Marcia, Marcia
280 is definitely a beautiful drive, and almost straddles the San Andreas Fault from Hwy 92 to Daly City!
Jeff
Ever try taking the Bay Bridge into the city at morning rush hour? I’d shoot myself if I had to do that every day.
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
When the jet streams move equatorward …..
quote from Kristian Birkeland’s monograph Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition 1902-1903:
(Chapter VI. On Possible Electric Phenomena in Solar Systems and Nebulae)
http://www.plasma-universe.com/index.ph … nd_Nebulae
Kristian Birkeland wrote:We will now pass on to experiments that in my opinion have brought about the most important discoveries in the long chain of experimental analogies to terrestrial and cosmic phenomena that I have produced. In the experiments represented in figs. 248 a-e, there are some small white patches on the globe, which are due to a kind of discharge that, under ordinary circumstances, is disruptive, and which radiates from points on the cathode. If the globe has a smooth surface and is not magnetised, the disruptive discharges come rapidly one after another, and are distributed more or less uniformly all over the globe (see a). On the other hand, if the globe is magnetised, even very slightly, the patches from which the disruptive discharges issue, arrange themselves then in two zones parallel with the magnetic equator of the globe; and the more powerfully the globe is magnetised, the nearer do they come to the equator (see b, c, d). With a constant magnetisation, the zones of patches will be found near the equator if the discharge-tension is low, but far from the equator if the tension is high.
And:
First Global Connection Between Earth And Space Weather Found
09.12.06
Weather on Earth has a surprising connection to space weather occurring high in the electrically-charged upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere, according to new results from NASA satellites.
>>wws
>>now controlled by true nihilists, people who would rather see
>>everything they control destroyed, even entire countries, before
>>they will accept political defeat
Strange, but true. I came across a senior Labour party activist who admitted that they wanted to see the UK destroyed.
(Apparently because we were rich and decadent and owed a huge debt to the Third World, and the only way to repay that debt was to become poorer that the Third World and submit to their rule. I did question his logic, but the guy was as much beyond reason as any religious fanatic.)
Nasa link:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/space_weather_link
Please, don´t blame that little girl, La Niña, but to his father, the Sun, he doesn´t give her enough heat.
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:13 am
Bob,
You don’t need very cold winter temperatures to form glaciers – they just have to remain cool in the summer.
You should know that down here, above 4000 mts. snows DURING SUMMER TIME, not during winter time. Above 4500 mts. it is always below 0°C.
http://elcomercio.pe/impresa/notas/nevada-ticlio-interrumpio-15-horas-transito-carretera-central/20100325/451575
…and don´t be surprised by the high altitude numbers, the central highway, going eastward from the peruvian capital to the sierras, reaches 5,050 meters of altitude at its highest point. The railway crosses the mountains a bit lower, at 4950 meters high.
>>bubba
>>I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in
>>S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not
>>been bamboozled by the warm-earthers.
It is not only governments that get bamboozled, but industry too.
A leading UK airline only stocked 3-days worth of de-icing fluid last winter, because the warmists said it was going to be a mild winter.
Needless to say, this same leading airline spent much of the winter grounded. The fools will never lean.
.
Weather in Oruro, Bolivia, general elevation circa 12,200 feet
http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Weather/C/Oruro/SLOR.htm
Location of Oruro
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-17.96280,-67.07625&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.978077,77.958984&ie=UTF8&ll=-17.978733,-67.08252&spn=7.560798,9.744873&t=h&z=7
(N.B. The Google Maps general elevation contour for Oruro is 3720m and not 3072m as stated on Tu Tiempo dot Net)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-17.96280,-67.07625&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.978077,77.958984&ie=UTF8&t=p&ll=-17.963792,-67.072477&spn=0.039435,0.055189&z=14
Ralph says:
July 30, 2010 at 5:36 pm
>>bubba
>>I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in
>>S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not
>>been bamboozled by the warm-earthers.
You won´t believe it, but many journalists here are blaming this COLD to Climate Change/Global Warming!
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:54 am
John,
Now explain why GISTEMP is going up 7X faster than satellite data.
Please don’t forget that GISS has an outstanding coverage in case of the Arctic regions. The dataset is compiled by one of the world’s top climate scientists.
/sarc
This week Peru’s capital, Lima, has recorded its lowest temperatures in 46 years at 8 centigrade. In Peru’s hot and humid Amazon region, temperatures have also dropped to as low as 9 centigrade. So far this year, the jungle region(*) has already recorded five cold spells
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=361111&CategoryId=14095
(*) The TROPICAL amazon basin!
mjk writes:
“Cherry picking as always Steve.”
No, he is emphasizing something of great importance to many of us and especially to me, the El Nina conditions in South America. I moved to Florida to escape winter, but the last two years we had a Yankee winter. Another one and I will be forced to move south.
Also, why does Steve need to emphasize warm conditions on the planet when the Once-MSM is screaming at the top of its lungs that billions are dying from global warming. Steve provides balance. You should come here to find that and you should appreciate it.
Last time I saw any record published, BART was reported (in the Sac Bee) to cost $5000 per passenger-mile per year.
Have they improved their efficiency of destroying wealth to indulge green fantasies?
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 4:05 pm
“Geoff Sharp says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:44 am
Stephen Wilde says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:10 am
Steve, this graph is interesting. There is a relationship between the AAO(SAM) & SOI that is consistent. Notice how the AAO is neg during El Ninos and pos during La Ninas, if this follows history a very highly positive AAO might suggest a large La Nina on the way?
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/soi_sam.png
Maybe the reduction in latitude of the westerlies allows the equatorial easterly trade winds to blow stronger? Some say the atmosphere related oscillations are linked to UV rates, I have a story and prediction here:
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/189
“Geoff Sharp says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:14 pm ”
Thanks Geoff. I’ll give that some thought.
I haven’t yet refined my concept to deal with the variable interactions between individual components of the air circulation system. If I do get to that stage then I think we’ll see interesting ways in which latitudinal air circulation shifts feed back into ENSO and other oceanic events.
It might be possible to integrate Bob Tisdale’s fine ENSO work with my broader picture for the benefit of both of us.
All I’ve done so far is try to identify a coherent general overview to explain longer term shifts but even that is often overturned locally and regionally on shorter time scales.
It seems to hold good multidecadally (and longer) and globally though.
Steve, a small correction: the blue areas in the map are in the Argentinean side on the Andes. It is called the Puna. Bolivia is a little to the north. Even so, the map for the Bolivia area should be blue, not green.
This morning was about -13ºC in Bariloche, (Patagonia) where Brazilian tourists are trying to ski in lots of fresh powder snow. The east side of Chubut province got a heavy snowafall, and the new incoming polar freezing wave is scaring everybody in Argentina. There a new snowfall forecast for tomorrow or Sunday at the center of the country, where I live (32ºS) and government emergency teams are taking all the poor people they can from the streets –or they will freeze to death.
Geoff Sharp said:
“Some say the atmosphere related oscillations are linked to UV rates, I have a story and prediction here:
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/189”
I suspect that UV levels are relevant in some way as also could be the speed of the solar wind or it’s degree of turbulence in response to solar surface variability and of course there would be an effect on cosmic ray amounts.
Whatever the proximate cause I think the effect which actually affects climate from above is solar induced differential variability in the rate of energy flux upward through the various layers of the atmosphere. If that affects the temperature of the stratosphere then the strength of the inversion at the tropopause is affected and I see that as the way the tropospheric pressure distribution is affected from above.
A cooler stratosphere with a weaker inversion at the tropopause must allow faster energy flux out of the troposphere with both a poleward shift in the jets and a raising of the height of the tropopause. The opposite for a warmer stratosphere.
I’m pretty sure that that is the right track and your work is highly relevant but we need to better link changes in stratospheric temperatures with external solar effects. I’m sure the link exists despite Leif’s negative comments.
booze for cars
bubbagyro says: (July 30, 2010 at 8:58 am) I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not been bamboozled by the warm-earthers. …
All you say in this comment has continued to go around and around in my mind for some time now. Anyone, and in particular governments, promoting “global warming” without a balance of concern and preparation for cold events such as those in South America and lands above China right now must accept responsibility for the deaths and despair that cold has brought.
For governments, again in particular, tunnel vision is not an virtue; it is a crime.
mjk m@6:05 (30th July)
What was that about the rest of the world baking (during the last Northern winter)? It was a cooler than usual summer in Victoria this year (Australia) after last year’s terrible summer. I was there at the time; personal experience (and had just travelled over from the Northern winter here). They are now having a very cool wet winter (family personal experience).
It might be baking in Russia right now, but not here in south west England. We haven’t had much heat since 2006. I feel the heat but have not needed the AC once in the bedroom this year (even last year I used it a couple of times) and have hardly used it in the kitchen; which has large heat-collecting windows. This observation is personal experience, not computer-generated predictions!
JohnnyD @ 7:30am
“Climate alarmists” are concerned about the ‘long term trends’? Why then do they not go back to the MWP as a (relatively short) long term, or go back to look at data in geological terms?
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:53 am
John Finn
I’d be happy to explain your graph to you. You cherry picked the start date at the peak of a La Nina and your end date at the peak of an El Nino. Thus the trend is going up.
Steve
I didn’t “cherry pick” anything. I used the same period as the plot Geoff Sharp linked to. If Geoff has misrepresented your graph I suggest you take it up with him.
Incidentally, I don’t believe a 10 year trend tells us anything. One reason being the ENSO factor
which you alluded to. However, this hasn’t stopped posters on WUWT presenting graphs which begin in 1998 and end in 2008.
I take it you wouldn’t dream of using a trend since 2007 to show “arctic ice recovery” this autumn.
Ref – Gail Combs says:
July 30, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Pascvaks says:
July 30, 2010 at 12:29 pm
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
“A bit of explanation please. The left side is the present , correct? The zero line is the current global average temperature? If that is true we are a wee bit cold at present – as in near glacial temps are we not?”
__________________________
The left side IS the present. The zero line is NOT the current global average temperature; it’s a SWAG of Normal over the period of the graph. We ARE a wee bit cold at present – as in near glacial temps, and we have been since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden. I imagine people –if we survive the next few twenty Glacials– will be living underground in a couple ten million years; now THAT’S going to be Globally Hot (NOT warm).
Pascvaks says:
July 31, 2010 at 3:53 am
No! I’m Wrong, You’re Right. It’s just so hot and tight in the present that I can see straight. ‘0’C is what you said and not what I said. Mea Culpa!
stevengoddard says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:11 am
John,
I removed the trend lines so that we can see the trick you pulled.
I didn’t pull any trick. I plotted the trend lines to the graph that Geoff Sharp posted.
Now, let’s do the right thing El Nino peak-to-peak to see just how screwed up GISTEMP is
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.4/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.45/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.18/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2010/offset:-0.25/trend
I’ve calculated the trend for UAH (Jan 1998 to June 2010) and it’s positive. This may have something to do with using monthly rather than annual data – not sure. However differences in trends are to be expected over relatively short periods. There are different response times to ENSO etc. The trends for all 4 main datasets are in close agreement over 25 -30 years. If GISS are fudging data to show more warming that than there is they’re doing a pretty poor job of it.
That picture of ocean temperatures is quite striking: much warmer than normal in the North Atlantic, but significantly cooler in the South Atlantic and Eastern Pacific in both hemispheres.
Now where are the most ardent warmists??
Why: in Europe and on the East Coast of the USA, of course.
Are there any ardent warmists in Buenos Aires right now?
John Finn says:
July 31, 2010 at 3:30 am
I take it you wouldn’t dream of using a trend since 2007 to show “arctic ice recovery” this autumn.
Does this mean you deny there has been a recovery since 2007?
Don’t forget, 2007 was supposed to be evidence for a “death spiral” of arctic sea ice.
How’s that coming?
Roger Carr says:
July 31, 2010 at 12:25 am
booze for cars
bubbagyro says: (July 30, 2010 at 8:58 am) I really believe that the unprecedented number of deaths in S. America could have been avoided if the governments had not been bamboozled by the warm-earthers. …
All you say in this comment has continued to go around and around in my mind for some time now. Anyone, and in particular governments, promoting “global warming” without a balance of concern and preparation for cold events such as those in South America and lands above China right now must accept responsibility for the deaths and despair that cold has brought.
For governments, again in particular, tunnel vision is not an virtue; it is a crime.
___________________________________________________
Yes and it is about time they were brought to book for their crimes. For example:
Biofuel starvation wasn’t “unforeseen consequences”
“The U.S. corn crop, accounting for 40 percent of the global harvest and supplying nearly 70 percent of the world’s corn imports…
Congress required that biofuel use increase five times…
wheat prices have tripled, corn prices doubled and rice prices nearly doubled…
…. there were real warnings about possible starvation as a consequence of the law Sarasohn refers to (the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 ).
The possible consequences were clearly communicated in a Senate briefing a week before initial passage of the Senate bill and 6 months before final approval of the final House-Senate bill.
Here’s a bit from a June 13, 2007 Senate briefing given by Lester Brown from the Earth Policy Institute:
The U.S. corn crop, accounting for 40 percent of the global harvest and supplying nearly 70 percent of the world’s corn imports, looms large in the world food economy. Annual U.S. corn exports of some 55 million tons account for nearly one fourth of world grain exports. The corn harvest of Iowa alone exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada. Substantially reducing this export flow would send shock waves throughout the world economy.
In six of the last seven years, total world grain production has fallen short of use. As a result, world carryover stocks of grain have been drawn down to 57 days of consumption, the lowest level in 34 years. (See Data.) “
To add insult to injury Congress did not even see if biofuel actually saves on the use of oil. It does not! David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell found it takes more fossil fuel to produce biofuel than is recovered:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
But that is alright Monsanto and Cargill posted record breaking profits, while President Clinton appointed the VP of Cargill to write the Agreement on Ag for the soon to be ratified World Trade Organization, appointed the President of Monsanto as his Senior Trade Adviser, and appointed Monsanto’s lawyer to a high position in the FDA.
Biofuel starvation “unforeseen consequences”??? Greed without a conscience is more like it.
So was there starvation? A study published in 2007 by two US scholars, Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, calculated that biofuel production will cause the doubling of starvation figures in the world: by 2025. They estimate there will be 1.2 billion people starving. http://people.clarkson.edu/~kvisser/hp200/docs/StarveThePoor%3F.pdf
In 2008: “We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”
I can not find any solid figures on starvation but there were certainly food riots around the world in 2008 About a month ago [May 2010] Bill Clinton sat in congress and admitted that he played a vital part in the willful destruction of the agricultural base of Haiti…” And we let these amoral people lead our countries.
Gail Combs (July 31, 2010 at 12:24 pm)
Thank you for that expansion, Gail… it is all rather too shocking to comment on beyond noting that we are all guilty, too, if we do not each make some effort (as you are doing here) to make this an issue which people can see and judge.
I do not think they will judge kindly those who cynically exploit their fellows.
Bruce Cobb says:
July 31, 2010 at 8:59 am
Does this mean you deny there has been a recovery since 2007?
In the same way that there is no evidence to suggest the world is cooling there is quite definitely no evidence to suggest arctic ice extent is increasing. There will always be year to year fluctuations about a trend. Weather conditions in 2007 caused an unusually large ice extent loss in 2007.
Unless there is an obvious uptick in minimum ice extent it will be several years before we can say wiht any certainty that the downward trend has reversed or stopped.
I notice in another post you implied I was a “whinging warmer”. I would suggest you are too quick to jump to conclusions regardless of the topic.
John Finn says:
August 1, 2010 at 1:50 am
Unless there is an obvious uptick in minimum ice extent it will be several years before we can say wiht any certainty that the downward trend has reversed or stopped.
Indeed. Nor did I say that it had. But, I guess you were just jumping to your own conclusion.
I notice in another post you implied I was a “whinging warmer”. I would suggest you are too quick to jump to conclusions regardless of the topic.
No, I wasn’t implying any such thing. You asked what might happen if the warming reoccurred after the La Nina, and I suggested a possibility.
But, if the shoe fits…
Rhys Jaggar says:
July 31, 2010 at 7:49 am
Now where are the most ardent warmists??
Didn’t you know it?….looking for warm massages…:-)
sarc on/
I’ve decided that the strange hot and cold regions are due to Anthropogenic Conspiracies and corruption. We are now paying the consequences of “harvesting” the Energy from the Wind. We are stopping the wind from doing what it was meant to do which is to “Equalize Temperatures”.
Once again evil Man and other corrupt Capitalist Pigs who build Wind Mills are destroying the World, while they revel in their Profits!
Idiots of the World Unite! and fight these corrupt evil doers! Tax them into Oblivion.! We must liquidate the Kulaks! (Oops, wrong Party line) .
Wait a minute, the government subsidizes Wind Mills; there are No Profits! After sponsorship and urgings by the WWF, Sierra Club and us all… We have met the Enemy and He is… US !?! It can’t be. We are Virtuous and building an Utopia here.
Nevermind…
sarc/off
Yeah, a bunch of environmentalists and ‘evil liberals’ are in a conspiracy to PROVE global warming but all of the oil companies and Republicans have NOTHING to gain by disproving it and are offering objective science.
You people are so silly! No one event can indicate climate change but there has sure been a lot of heat waves and floods if you look at the whole globe.
Enjoy your political suicide, it will be fun watching all these people get torn apart when it becomes too obvious to ignore what is going on. Too bad by then it will be a lot harder to fix the problem.
[REPLY – Well, you can go further than that. EVERYONE has a HUGE AMOUNT to gain by disproving it. Oil Companies, Republicans — and everybody else. But no one more than those who are living on the brink of starvation in the third and fourth world, many millions of whom will die prematurely if world economic growth is cut by a third to half.
And, yes, I confess it has been tremendous fun watching politically suicidal partisans in the debate getting torn apart. (Not that they didn’t have it coming.) ~ Evan]
just a question i said id ask ye experts as i have an iterest in weather. will ireland experience a very cold winter with heavy snowfall or will it be mild and damp like we usually get? me im hoping for snow)