Those that want to make today’s weather seem like the “worst ever” often make ludicrous claims trying to link weather to high CO2 levels. For example, that extra CO2 gives the weather “personality“, or even more extreme linkage, like this:
Climate change means increased severe weather and asthma attacks. See what it means for your state: http://t.co/Pe9mOTVAro
— US EPA Research (@EPAresearch) July 1, 2013
and this
Climate Depot has a headline from Goddard that touts all the weather (not climate) issues of 2013 in the context of the highest ever reported CO2 concentration in modern times. Unfortunately, the link contained no proof, only claims. I decided to provide the proof.
First, about that 400PPM of CO2:
Unfortunately, they backed down from the claim later saying:
‘Carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere did not break the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million at a Hawaiian observatory last week, according to a revised reading from the nation’s climate observers.
The current level as of this writing is at: 395.50ppm and has actually gone down since the announcement of breaking the 400 ppm mark:
![co2_weekly_mlo[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/co2_weekly_mlo1-e1376168771698.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Next: let’s take each of the claims below and provide the context for proof:
- Coldest summer on record at the North Pole
- Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006
- Record high August Antarctic ice extent
- No major hurricane strikes for eight years
- Slowest tornado season on record
- No global warming for 17 years
- Second slowest fire season on record
- Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008
Coldest summer on record at the North Pole:
Easy to prove, as we’ve covered this issue recently here. The DMI plot of Arctic temperature for 2013 (at the end pause of this animation) hasn’t gone above the climatic normals since this dataset began in 1958:
Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006:
Plausible, but is debatable, depending on what data you look at, for example, this plot from DMI:
![icecover_current_new[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/icecover_current_new1.png?quality=75)
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Others on the WUWT sea ice page suggest it could go either way. What isn’t debatable though is that there has been a dramatic slowing of loss of Arctic ice extent in the past couple of weeks, as shown below, and that the current extent is well within the +/- 2 standard deviation.
Source: arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.anom.1979-2008
Record high August Antarctic ice extent:
That’s easy to show, at the end of July starting into August, as Paul Homewood demonstrates:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/daily/data/
Since then, Sunshine Hours puts it in context with other years:
After taking a small jog sideways and downwards, Antarctic Sea Extent is back to moving up.
Day 221 is in 2nd place. 2010 holds the daily record. Can 2013 catch the 2010 record pace again? Wait and see.
No major hurricane strikes for eight years:
As we pointed out at the beginning of the hurricane season on June 1st, Hurricane season begins with a new record hurricane drought for the USA
The graph above provides an update to data on the remarkable ongoing US “intense hurricane drought.” When the Atlantic hurricane season starts next June 1, it will have been 2,777 days since the last time an intense (that is a Category 3, 4 or 5) hurricane made landfall along the US coast (Wilma in 2005). Such a prolonged period without an intense hurricane landfall has not been observed since 1900. – Dr. Roger Pielke Jr
It is now at 2847 days since Hurricane Wilma (the last Cat3 hurricane to strike the USA) on Oct 24th, 2005 as of August 10th, 2013.
Slowest tornado season on record:
Easy to prove, just look at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center Data, which shows we are near a record low for tornado activity in the USA:
![torngraph-big[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/torngraph-big1.png?quality=75)
![torgraph-big[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/torgraph-big1.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
No global warming for 17 years:
This statement gets a number of people riled up, but it is clear that global warming has slowed to a crawl. Even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit this.
Last year we had this:
Now a year later:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
and
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend
Slight cooling in the troposphere, slight warming at the surface, both virtually flat.
Of course after the latest HadCRUT4 “adjustments” are added in, some can claim it is actually warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/trend
Second slowest fire season on record:
Actually, just for this record set. The National Fire Information Center says:
2013 is actually lowest in the last decade for the number of fires, and second lowest for acreage.
Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008:
Rutgers snow lab shows this clearly.
![nhland_season1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/nhland_season11.gif)
1978 was tops, followed by 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2008.
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
We live in interesting times of nearly 400ppm of Co2 concentration in our atmosphere.
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If CO2 was at the same level as of 800,000 years ago, why are we cooler by 5-10 degrees and sea levels lower by 75-120 feet? This would indicate there’s no CO2/temp/sea level relationship.
Anthony, don’t know if it’s just my browser, but the two woodfortrees graphs under “No Global Warming for 14 years” are just torture on the eyes.
There used to be handful of 350.org lawn posters in our neighborhood.
Not any more. Perhaps the people that had them might be a bit embarassed.
Go HadCRUT4! I like absurd humour.
@ur momisugly Tommy Roche, try a refresh now
What are the “HadCRUT4 adjustments”?
I grow weary constantly rebutting the state propaganda; but that is, after all, the purpose of incessant state propaganda.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
variously attributed to Lenin (I doubt) Goebels (possible) but the most unlikely is William James (1842-1910) The father of modern Psychology “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.”
I looked at the CO2 plot and thought, “Wow, that’s quite a change”. Then I looked at the temperature scale.
I think 1978 was the record year for snow extent. Just saying.
REPLY: yep, eyesight issue, fixed thanks. – Anthony
I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for putting it together. But even more importantly — thanks for that preview button! I just noticed it.
I searched Wikiquotes for William James and “nothing” and found nopthing relevant.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James
The science is settled, the new preview button rocks. And there is more science in that statement than anything the Goreacle ever leaked from his insidious lips.
Wikiquotes says there are no reliable sources for it being a quote by Goebels. (But Wikianything is very political outside the hard sciences).
Personally, I think this is something ALL statesman inherently know. Like a tyrant’s old wive’s tale.
Seriously, I would love to nail this source down. Any ideas?
During the Eemian interglacial of 125,000 years ago, atmospheric CO2 was lower, yet sea level was almost 30 feet higher, and temperature was 3 to 4 degrees Celsius higher. http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-paper-finds-sea-levels-rose.html
Remarkably, the higher temperatures were not related to CO2 levels, and there was no run-away warming. As always, observations trump hypotheses based on the outputs of computer models. You don’t have to look at your computer to know if it’s raining; just look out the window.
Similarly, recent studies of coastal English villages show sea level was 3 to 4 feet higher during the Medieval Warm Period a thousand years ago. That’s when vineyards flourished in England (where they don’t today).
Now we are just emerging from the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD), the coldest period since the end of the Ice Age. Of course it’s warming! Just like four other times in the past 12,000 years (the Holocene Climatic Optimum, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warming), only not warming as much as the earlier warming periods – or the even warmer Eemian interglacial.
With Nature’s handwriting everywhere you look – previous higher sea levels, tree lines higher and further north, warm weather crops grown where they don’t grow now, greater glacier retreat than now – it’s a shame that alarmists are blinded by their dogma and can’t look out their windows to see the history of natural climate change.
So I must label them what they are: natural climate change deniers.
We believers in the Null (Natural Variation rulez) are having a great time.
OK I give up on internet resources; they are politicized on this subject.
Personally I opt for Goebels because he was logical and effective (unfortunately) … just the type to logically enunciate how statecraft works. Macchiavelli was a similar character, though on the right side of goodness. If anyone wants the directions to where Macchiavelli spent 20 years in internal exile in Florence, just ask me. There’s a good restaurant opposite.
Anthony, Kenji is remarkable. He always seems to have the right opinion!
PS: I like the new preview feature!!!!!
Being Sunny, it is difficult to wait for the cold, snow, horrid weather, as the Sun’s output plummets. What I mean is that Global cooling can/will be brutal. The Global temperatures dropped 2C between 1600 and 1650. Anyone who wants this to happen has a screw loose.
On the other hand Global Warming made available more crop land, cheaper food etc. The argument is whether people/industry warmed the Earth or not. It is too bad that the people we work for [governments] had to resort to deception instead of just increasing taxes [like usual].
I wonder what the warmist parties are like nowadays. After getting a hugely expensive temperature measuring method funded and implemented, only to have to resort to more and more laughably transparent adjustments of other people’s prior work. There must be a lot of alcohol involved. Also, there must be a winnowing process as the IQ limbo slowly clips the more intelligent from the invite list. At some point, the amount of alcohol required to make the conversation lucid likely exceeds the level required to remain conscious. We can call it the Watts ratio, as in the blood alcohol level required to converse with a warmist divided by the blood alcohol level at which the average human passes out. We’ll know that the warmist position is finally dead when the ratio equals 1.
I’m already ready for climate change – finally broke down and purchased a snow thrower that should handle anything the coming colder winters will throw at us.
Tiredoc says: @ugust 10, 2013 at 4:52 pm
I wonder what the warmist parties are like nowadays
The warmistas do not give an eff. They use global warming as an excuse for socialist policies. It’s that simple. Yes, it is political and launched by the left. Lysenko anyone?
Got a “server error” when chasing the T-shirt. Link not quite ready?
I can hear in my head the cagw crowd: record snowfall = climate change, record no of days without hurricanes = climate change, record number of years with no warming or cooling =climate change, record Antarctic ice…you get the drift. It is an argument you can never win with these guys! Maybe highlighting all the records not broken is the way to go. That should bore the crowd to death.
Yer know what Anthony, at 400ppm – as the tree said to the birds, “it sure tastes better than it ever did!”
Michael Combs says:
August 10, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Are you kin to Gail Combs? If so, perspicacity runs in the family.
We Combs are the largest closely related family in the US, with strong and ancient ties to Virginia and Kentucky (John Combs (or Combes) arrived in Jamestown on the 20th of May, 1619, on the good ship Marigold as an indentured servant). For years the biggest reunion in the US annually was the Combs getting together the first weekend of August in Hazard, Kentucky (featured in Life Magazine in the early 1960’s). That said, i hope I’m related to Gail because what she writes about natural climate change here on WUWT bestows great credit on the family name.