Click for source image
No red dots on this map. The map above appears to be representing Weather Service Forecast Office forecast zones, though I’m not absolutely sure since no reference is included with the map. If so, then each of these divisions is an area where a Zone Forecast is issued for. These are what we see as our regular daily forecasts on TV, Newspapers, and Radio. The map above is from NCDC’s research section and was brought to my attention by WUWT commenter “pearlandaggie”.
Update: It turns out they are “climate divisions” see here with thanks to Basil.
The public hasn’t been widely exposed to the map above. The map below is what was in the latest press release.
If we just look at the month of December, the USA still looks cooler than normal or near normal for the most part, with the southeast USA being the exception:
Click for source image
NOAA says in the press release:
South Carolina and Georgia had their sixth and eighth, respectively, warmest December on record.
The first map was not part of the press release, the second one was. I wonder why NOAA chose not to include a yearly map presentation like the first one above from their research section, but only chose to show one for December 2008 even though the title of the press release was:
NOAA: 2008 Temperature for U.S. Near Average, was Coldest Since 1997; Below Average for December
It would seem to me that if you run a press release about the entire year of 2008, you’d put in a map for 2008 also. It’s not like they didn’t have one available.
To their credit, they did include the time series, but as my years of television experience have told me, that isn’t often as easily interpreted by the general public.
Here is what the CONUS temperature time series looks like with 2008 added, as included in the press release:
NOAA says in their press release:
For 2008, the average temperature of 53.0 degrees F was 0.2 degree above the 20th Century average.
In other words; near normal.
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james griffin (11:16:40) :
You may have had a problem with the spelling but your view is as clear as daylight. Next time she’s interviewed on TV we will need to bow to her higher intellect.
For what it is worth, NOAA publishes weekly and monthly data on heating-degree days and cooling-degree days for U.S. cities, at
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/cdus/degree_days/
I have been downloading the weekly data for Heating Degree Days Cities Listing for a few months now, into a spreadsheet and doing some calculations and graphs.
What is interesting to me is that in the U.S. 2008 was definitely colder than 2007, by about 9 percent; that is, there were 9 percent more HD days in 2008 than 2007. Also, 2008 was only 1.2 percent warmer than the “average”, whatever that is. There were 1.2 percent fewer HD days in 2008 compared to the “average.”
I have not yet downloaded the cooling degree data, but will soon.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Basil: My glasses is not enough
blue or red?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/what-is-the-red-dot/
thanks
Mike86 (11:43:31) :
So drive slower. 🙂 Or at least drive downwind.
Last year was another hot one for Australia – http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20090105.shtml
Given that the surface temperature of this planet was a long way above average in 2008, I can show you far more warm places that cool place.
Sorry James but I should have added, according to my wife, that Emma, like all thespians, is a great scientist first and actor second, hence the mess we are in. They know it all.
“So one with a 7 such as Minnesota, is the 7th coldest on record. ”
I’m on the border between much below and just below norm for 2008. We will have 3 evenings this week -24F or below, with one such last month.
Put me down for ‘much below’ in 2009. Not happy.
REPLY: “wind turbines taking up less than 3 square kilometres”? Doubtful…we have that much area of wind turbines in California alone already.- Anthony
Altamont fulfills the space requirement.plus. The professor did say, “in theory. I would be interested in the details of how the 3 square kilometers would accommodate the required number of wind turbines.
The world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai, is 680 meters (2270.4 feet) in height and growing. The professor, who apparently lives in the seclusion of academic life, perhaps envisions a similar 2200-foot tower with 3 megawatt turbines located at 200-foot intervals. At 33 megawatts per tower, how many towers would be required to fulfill the energy requirement and would they fit within 3 square kilometers?
Maintenance would pose a problem, but one of those prevalent mid-western tornadoes would bring the turbines down to ground level for ease of access.
Not one commenter has made reference to the U.S. Temp graph and the fact that the warmest year on record is now back to 1998 and the hottest years of the 1930’s have disappeared. Tell a lie enough times and pretty soon it becomes irrefutable fact accepted by all and the rule of the land. The graph is a fabrication!
This is why the battle is being lost. This is why Henry Waxman will have carte blanche with global warming legislation.
crosspatch
“What imbeciles. They actually believe they can regulate climate through legislation. Term limits, PLEASE!”
The actions of politicians is more about regulating and controlling We the People than anything else. To achieve that goal they will use any spurious reason available.
Term limits? Not likely. There is already talk of repealing the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution and the Chosen One, The Messiah, has yet to be inaugurated.
John Galt (10:35:34) :
“The key to understanding AGW is to understand that everything supports the theory. Everything is consistent with the models and if the data doesn’t match, just adjust the data accordingly.”
John, are you applying for a position on the IPCC computer modeling team?
108 years, with a total +.2 C rise. Hard to get shookup about that.
There’s no way that the GISS Siberian temperatures can keep rising credibly unless Siberia is actually turning into a tropical paradise. Not likely.
Given that, I expect even GISS’s reporting must start plummeting. Sorry warmists, continued rises should have been a safe bet, since temps have risen fairly steadily since the last ice age.
The warmists are now pushing for policy changes with the ferocity of someone who’s got a year to live. They’ve got to know that if the cooling continues, the public will eventually reject all of warmism. But if the warmists can get their policies into law… the laws may outlast their scare campaign by many years. These folks will clean up on carbon trading, carbon credits, and position promotions, make no mistake.
This reminds me of Byrons’ dedication to his Don Juan:
You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And then you overstrain yourself,or so,
And tumble downwards like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.
N.B. ‘Bob’ was Robert Southey, the ‘poet laureate of the time and, representative of that consensus, and ‘a dry bob’ is slang for you know what..
And if people were still capable of such savage satire..
My parents live in Fort Wayne, In. The one “near normal” zone in Indiana, and i can assure you, its been definally a below normal year for them as well. And how does a much below zone meet up with a near normal zone anyways? There are a few of those on the map, I find that strange.
“” Basil (11:06:43) :
Leon Brozyna (10:00:07) :
I assume that the divergence from normal as shown on the maps is based on a 30-year average, while the graph shows each year’s temperature in relation to the 20th century mean. “”
So Basil, who needs base periods; and for what purpose.
Imagine if you will if someone threw a party; anf they invited every Climatologist and every member of the AGS to the party; and everybody brought their thermometers to the party so they could compare them all.
Then somebody who was still sober could stand up and say; “Why don’t we arbitrarily define the triple Point of Water as being at 273.16 Kelvins, and also define zero degrees Celsius as being 273.15 Kelvins.
Then everybody could reset their thermometers, go back home, and nobody ever again would ever have to mention a “base period”, or even an “anomaly”.
Everybody could simply label their graphs in Deg C or in Kelvins for the snooty types.
How would that work if the field of climatology decided to rejoin the rest of the science community, and make use of the already agreed upon international set of measurement units.
George
When I look at the Jan – Dec graph and then I look at this graph http://www.stats.indiana.edu/maptools/maps/thematic/population/us_daytime_density_00.jpg I can’t help but notice the apparent correlation of ‘above normal’ areas with high population density areas across the country, except for the midwest.
The fact that a nearly normal US temperature is seen as big news depicts clearly enough the warming trend we had.
A big fat la nina, a solar minimum, a negative PDO and some volcano dust in the air, and all we have is a normal temperature? I wish there won’t be an el nino during the next solar maximum…
George E Smith says:
The problem with this is that color-coded anomalies are very good for scaring people, especially when displayed on a standard global projection.
All that red running across the top, even if it is only showing that they are 4 degrees above the base of -30 degrees scares people greatly.
I think the real reason there’s such a foaming-at-the-mouth push to enact legistion now is that the writing is on the wall for an extended cold period over the next few decades. Little by little, the facts about the AGW scam are leaking out and the mainstream media can’t keep the truth bottle up forever. This is the left’s last chance to curtail personal freedom before the public wises up (as is starting to happen in Europe).
What a gift it was to the socialists- That CO2 (the byproduct of capitalism and economic progress) could be potentially harming the earth. Now that the truth about it is coming out, they’re scared to death of potentially squandering that gift, so it’s now a race to use it before its too late.
Dell Hunt, Jackson, Michigan (11:04:27) :
Comparing this to the recently released GISS stats for 2008 at:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
…
I realize that the two sets use a different base period, but does that explain for the full amount of the obvious discrepancy?
The different base period has a lot to do with it. Maybe the degree of smoothing, too. Here is the GISS data, with 250km smoothing, and with a base of 1971-2000:
http://i44.tinypic.com/fk5u37.jpg
It’s closer to what we’re looking at here, with cooling in the upper midwest, warming in CA and the southwest, and northeast. The biggest “discrepancy” I see is not enough cooling in the northwest. But maybe that’s the screwy smoothing that GISS does with these maps.
I have not read all the comments but I love that they mentionned that “South Carolina and Georgia had their sixth and eighth, respectively, warmest December on record.”, without mentionning that one state had their 7th coldest December, another one their 8th Coldest then it is 11th (2 states), 12th, 13th (2 states) coldest December, so 7 states had their 13th or worst coldest December over the last 115 years!
On the warm side, the 3rd is the 13th warmest then there is one 14th warmest in 4th and in 5th a 19th warmest.
So technically there are not wrong although when you look at the 5 states who had their warmest December and the 5 who had their coldest December, clearly the situation is on the coldest being worst.
It is with this sort of presentation that without lying they give you a wrong picture. everybody will be saying “can you believe South Carolina and Georgia had their sixth and eighth, respectively, warmest December on record” My god, the end is near!!!!!
Anyway, the sciene against carbon is science achieved through carbon.
That’s what I’m talking about, bro! Apparently, if the Alarmists didn’t have the ability to think, then they wouldn’t have to worry so much.
O/T
In case no one’s checked it out yet, it is now official – WUWT is the 2008 Best Science Blog.
I know, it’s a bit anticlimactic.
Listen carefully, Jacobson is talking about the footprint of the supports for wind turbines replacing CO2 producing cars only, with electric cars supplied by a grid. It is not stated how big the vanes, or height of structures, nor our tendency of increased energy use for personel transportation. The problems with intermittant wind are said to be solvable with optimization tools, but were not specifired. The specification is about the power generated, not distribution. Nor, the problems with transmission loss or the impact to the grid due to intermittant sources are not specified. HIs talk does not agree with the practical problems that have been expeirenced in Texas, Calfornia, and E.U., already documented in various media. It sounds like a think tank paper where without the assumptions, and caveats, the information is, as has been stated eloquently before, actually “disinformation”.