The usual suspects in the blogs and media have been bloviating about the record warmth of March and spinning it to redline for maximum fear factor, with the “loaded climate dice” theme. For example we have Andrew Freedman of Climate Central and his post, Global Warming May Have Fueled March Heat Wave Odds.
Scary big red maps aside, a quiet look at the data tells an entirely different story.
At least NCDC had the good sense in their report to avoid linking a weather pattern to AGW:
A persistent weather pattern during the month led to 25 states east of the Rockies having their warmest March on record. An additional 15 states had monthly temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. That same pattern brought cooler-than-average conditions to the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California.
Dr. Martin Hoerling on NOAA says much the same thing, attributing much to “randomness” and citing a similar event in March 1910 as seen below in the NCDC data plot:
It is difficult to make credible claims that March 2012 was AGW driven when looking at March 1910 when global CO2 was well below Dr. James Hansen’s posited “safe” 350 PPM level.
Hoerling also says that pulling an AGW signal out of this has “…statistical challenges in estimating how such a shift in distributions would alter extreme event odds, especially of the intensity observed in March 2012 whose magnitude was likely on the order of 4 – 6 standard deviations.”
Dr. Roy Spencer writes that the southerly wind component was the cause, and even shoots down the “yes but” before it gets out of the gate.
New Evidence Our Record Warm March was Not from Global Warming
by Dr. Roy Spencer
As part of my exploration of different surface temperature datasets, I’m examining the relationship between average U.S. temperatures and other weather variables in NOAA’s Integrated Surface Hourly (ISH) dataset. (I think I might have mistakenly called it “International” before, instead of “Integrated” Surface Hourly).
Anyway , one of the things that popped out of my analysis is related to our record warm March this year (2012). Connecting such an event to “global warming” would require either lazy thinking, jumping to conclusions, or evidence that the warmth was not caused by persistent southerly flow over an unusually large area for that time of year.
The U.S. is a pretty small place (about 2% of the Earth), and so a single high or low pressure area can cover most of the country. For example, if unusually persistent southerly flow sets up all month over most of the country, there will be unusual warmth. In that case we are talking about “weather”, not “climate change”.
Why do I say that? Because one of the basic concepts you learn in meteorology is “mass continuity”. If there is persistent and widespread southerly flow over the U.S., there must be (by mass continuity) the same amount of northerly flow elsewhere at the same latitude.
That means that our unusual warmth is matched by unusual coolness someplace else.
Well, guess what? It turns out that our record warm March was ALSO a record for southerly flow, averaged over the U.S. This is shown in the next plot, which comes from about 250 weather stations distributed across the Lower 48 (click for large version; heavy line is trailing 12 month average):
Weather records are broken on occasion, even without global warming. And here we see evidence that our March warmth was simply a chance fluctuation in weather patterns.
If you claim, “Well, maybe global warming caused the extra southerly flow!”, you then are also claiming (through mass continuity) that global warming ALSO caused extra northerly flow (with below normal temperatures) somewhere else.
And no matter what anyone has told you, global warming cannot cause colder than normal weather. It’s not in the physics. The fact that warming has been greatest in the Arctic means that the equator-to-pole temperature contrast has been reduced, which would mean less storminess and less North-South exchange of air masses — not more.
If it’s warm, it must be climate change. If it’s cold, I guess it’s climate change too.
“The fact that warming has been greatest in the Arctic means that the equator-to-pole temperature contrast has been reduced, which would mean less storminess and less North-South exchange of air masses — not more.”
….a fact that the legions of cut-and-paste armchair greens just can’t seem to get their head around. Cold Poles give us weather, some of it very ugly, as Joplin illustrated in 2011.
Pretty simple question: was there anywhere in the N. Hemisphere which had a really cold March?
Not the UK for sure – we had very mild/warm weather. April’s another story…..
Hot air dosen’t only rise it also moves across the surface of the earth.
[snip – put some descriptions with links – naked link bombing not encouraged here – Anthony]
The NAO was in a strong positive phase for most of the winter which contributed to the weather patterns seen across Eastern USA and Northern Europe.
I guess as we keep pointing out things like this in the record, in 5 yrs under a new dataset, it will be GONE!
Interesting note, though, I was able to find in the annual US record a flat trend from 1932-1997 sometime last year. Now i can go back to 1920. Even back to 1918 it’s only 0.02F/decade. 1895 to 1997 is only 0.07F. The entire record is 0.12F, and I’m pretty sure it used to be 0.14F or 0.16F.
How long was the European cold spell (Deaths in Ukraine, etc)?
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a similar analysis pointing out that the UAH global average March temperature was only +0.11 degrees C above the 30 year long average and more significantly the March 2012 global average temperature was -0.4 degrees C cooler than the UAH global average March temperature of 2010. The claim that this 2012 March temperature in the Midwest is consistent with what is expected with increased bouts of warm weather occurring because of on going global temperature increases is both illogical (March 2012 global average temperature is significantly cooler than occurred in 2010) as well as pure climate alarmist conjecture lacking any valid scientific link whatsoever.
if you extraopolate the records back to mid 1800’s it shows a cylical pattern of which we have reachd the apex of and are currently on the way down… while this is intersting stuff, it is localized weather caused by loclaized events.. the base cylical trend is unchanged.
if you look above the 1900 area is the apex of the last cycle…
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I live in a “red” state and indeed had a warm March. But it’s been very cool these April evenings. Got down to 42 last few nights. It takes more than one warm month to make me panic. ‘Sides, I love a good warm March!
“The fact that warming has been greatest in the Arctic means that the equator-to-pole temperature contrast has been reduced, which would mean less storminess and less North-South exchange of air masses — not more.”
That is exactly what I have been saying for years, and I had only one meteorology course in college.
[SNIP – this poster (fake name, fake email) is banned due to trying to incite a race issue with his gravatar, which is a policy violation. Don’t post here again until you remove that gravatar. – Anthony]
There has been a distinct shift in the modus operandi of Warmists. You see when we pointed to cold events they said it’s just the weather. Yet they are increasingly doing the same thing. Maybe it has something to do with the temperature standstill.
Rhys Jaggar says:
(April 16, 2012 at 11:46 am)
Pretty simple question: was there anywhere in the N. Hemisphere which had a really cold March?
= = = =
The folks in Alaska had a pretty miserable-cold March, on top of February, January, and December, IIRC. New record for snowfall in Anchorage and other coastal locations
“…statistical challenges in estimating how such a shift in distributions would alter extreme event odds…”
The “shifted distribution” meme is very popular over at Realclimate, and often presented as an established fact. Never mind that there is exactly nil evidence that any distributions have shifted. We have been warmer than average for a few decades perhaps, but well within the late Holocene “distribution.” Weather records occasionally fall as they always have. Analyses of extreme weather is necessarily post hoc (just try predicting it even a month out!), so the discussion of the associated statistics is more numerology than science.
The BS just doesn’t stop. As ice cap melts, militaries vie for Arctic edge http://news.yahoo.com/ice-cap-melts-militaries-vie-arctic-edge-072343565.html
Um, if they’re preparing for military action in an ice-free Arctic region, why are they doing exercises ON the ice? If the Arctic all melts, it seems a bit pointless eh?
Looks like a 100 year cycle.
[snip – Astrology, especially extra BS astrology trying to predict weather, is not a topic we discuss here – take your lame attempt at traffic generation elsewhere – Anthony]
It was so hot that both ABC News and NBC ran excellent stories that connected the heat wave to global warming.
WOW! One very warm month in one country is connected to global warming. But when it is pointed out that RSS shows no GLOBAL warming for 15 years, we are told 17 years is needed to be sure. To expand on Larry Hamlin says: April 16, 2012 at 12:13 pm, I will compare the global March anomalies for GISS, RSS and UAH and rank them to their respective global average anomalies. Respectively, the March numbers for these three are 0.46, 0.075 and 0.108. If these March numbers maintained this average for the whole year, the ranking would be 12th, 18th and 11th respectively. Improvement needed.
Lets be clear “Global warming” cannot “cause” warmer weather. It cannot because “global warming” does not exist as a physical entity. “Global warming” DESCRIBES long term STATISTICS of weather. Weather exists. Look outside. That is the weather at time x. When you collect a bunch of weather data and then compute statistics, you are computing or summarizing data. You are not observing, you are ‘mathing’. That summary does not exist as an observable. It is math about a collection of observables.
That math, the long term average, doesnt cause weather. It cant. Its an abstraction.
The problem is purely and soley linguistic. Global warming, which is just statistics, has been used so often in descriptions that people begin to think it is a thing. Its not.
That said, in a world that is warming, you can expect more marches like the one we had.
The warm march is of course tied to the levels of GHGs. If they were higher, the temp would be higher. if they were lower the temp would be lower.
Hoerling actually talks of a “weak overall contribution of GHG warming to the magnitude of the March 2012 heatwave”. That is not the same as the absolutist claim in your headline. Unfortunately your headline suggests WUWT cannot reflect the highly nuanced question of attribution.
REPLY: Race baiting gravatar removed – post allowed- Anthony
@Steven Mosher says:
April 16, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Perhaps you can get on ABC News as a dissenting voice? They really hyped this nonsense and nary a contrary opinion was offered.
For entertainment purposes I suggest going to Dr. Spencer’s blog and read the comments to this same article. At least one familiar WUWT troll is schooling everyone on the “Anthropocene climate.” If nothing else it is amusing…until it becomes tedious.
Minnesota’s Top Ten March averages(F). 1901 -2000 avg is 26.1.
1) 2012 – 41.2
2) 1910 – 40.6
3) 1946 – 36.4
4) 1973 – 36.0
2000 – 36.0
6) 2010 – 35.3
7) 1945 – 34.9
8) 1918 – 34.4
9) 1968 – 34.0
10) 1938 – 33.6
1981 – 33.6
As I look at this, what would disturb me if I believed in AGW is the lack of 80’s to present records in the top ten not being dominant. Yes, there is a sprinkling, but at least the bottom half of this record should be all from current decades, shouldn’t it? Hmmm…. lets see, maybe AGW isn’t quite strong enough yet to dominate the higher end of the records in March. Maybe it’s sneaking up in the next 10 and will be dominant in that set.
12) 1977 – 33.2
1987 – 33.2
14) 1902 – 32.7
15) 1905 – 32.5
1985 – 32.5
17) 1961 – 32.0
18) 1942 – 31.9
2007 – 31.9
20) 1911 – 31.5
Hmmm… data’s a *itch, isn’t it?!