UPDATE: The author’s (Lorne Gunter) claim of breaking the all time March record by -12 degrees is only partially correct. The phrase “smashing the previous March low” should have read “smashing the previous March 10th low”. Mr. Gunter erred in his statement.
The official all time March record Tmin occurred in 2003 and was -42.2°C details here from Environment Canada (Thanks to reader K Stricker for the link).
UPDATE#2: 3/18 I’ve sent off a note to Mr. Gunter on the error in the article, and I’m hoping that he will post a correction to the wording in his article below. I have not yet heard back from him and I’m trying an alternate contact route via another person known to have corresponded with him. Gunter’s mistake is that he claims a new low temperature record for the entire Month of March, when it is only for a single day, March 10th. While I can’t correct the text in Mr. Gunter’s article until he makes a correction himself (since I won’t modify another authors words) reader should take note that the claims made in the article are not supported by the actual data. While I agree that “global warming” has indeed stalled in the last few years, the claim of the all time March low for Edmonton is incorrect. – Anthony
Global warming’s no longer happening
So why are eco types moaning about record highs while ignoring record lows?
By Lorne Gunter, The Edmonton Journal
So far this month, at least 14 major weather stations in Alberta have recorded their lowest-ever March temperatures. I’m not talking about daily records; I mean they’ve recorded the lowest temperatures they’ve ever seen in the entire month of March since temperatures began being recorded in Alberta in the 1880s.
This past Tuesday, Edmonton International Airport reported an overnight low of -41.5 C, smashing the previous March low of -29.4 C set in 1975. Records just don’t fall by that much, but the airport’s did. Records are usually broken fractions of degrees. The International’s was exceeded by 12 degrees.
To give you an example of how huge is the difference between the old record and the new, if Edmonton were to exceed its highest-ever summer temperature by the same amount, the high here some July day would have to reach 50 C. That’s a Saudi Arabia-like temperature.
Also on the same day, Lloydminster hit -35.2 C, breaking its old March record of -29.2 C. Fort McMurray — where they know cold — broke a record set in 1950 with a reading of -39.9C. And Cold Lake, Slave Lake, Whitecourt, Peace River, High Level, Jasper and Banff, and a handful of other communities obliterated old cold values, most from the 1950s or 1970s, two of the coldest decades on record in the province.
This has been an especially cold winter across the country, with values returning to levels not often seen since the 1970s, which was an especially brutal decade of winters.
Temperatures began to plummet on the Prairies in December. The cold weather did not hit much of the rest of the country until January, but when it hit, it hit hard. Even against Canada’s normally frigid January standards, “this particular cold snap is noteworthy,” Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said this past January. Many regions across the country had not been as cold for 30 years or more, he added.
Does this prove fear of global warming is misplaced? On its own, probably not. But if records were being broken the other way — if several Alberta centres had recorded their warmest-ever March values — you can bet there would be no end of hand-wringing, horror stories about how we were on the precipice of an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions.
Environmentalists, scientists who advance the warming theory, politicians and reporters never shy away from hyping those weather stories that support their beliefs. But they tend to ignore or explain away stories that might cast doubt.
In 2005, the summer and fall of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when several major ‘canes pummelled North and Central America, we were told again and again that this was proof warming was happening and it was going to be bad. Al Gore has emissions from industrial smokestacks swirling up into a satellite image of a hurricane on the DVD box for his propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth to underline the point that more and eviller hurricanes will be the result of CO2 output.
But since 2005, only one major hurricane — this year’s Ike — has struck North America. And now comes a study from Florida State University researcher Ryan Maue, that shows worldwide cyclonic activity — typhoons, as well as hurricanes — has reached a 30-year low (tinyurl.com/bunynz).
Indeed, the hiatus may go back more than 30 years because it is difficult to compare records before about 1970 with those since, since measurements four or more decades ago were not as precise or thorough. Current low activity may actually be the lowest in 50 years or more.
If Maue had proven hurricane activity were at a 30-year high, of course his findings would have been reported far and wide. But since he is challenging the dogma of the Holy Mother Church of Climate Change, his research is ignored.
For at least the past five or six years, global temperatures have been falling. Look at the black trend line on the chart at www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ put out by the man who runs NASA’s worldwide network of weather satellites.
Also, in the past few months, two studies — one by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany and another by the University of Wisconsin — have shown a slowing, or even a reversal of warming for at least the next 10 to 20, and perhaps longer.
Even the Arctic sea ice, which has replaced hurricanes as the alarm of the moment ever since hurricanes ceased to threaten, has grown this winter to an extent not seen since around 1980.
Global warming is not only no longer happening, it is not likely to resume until 2025 or later, if then. So why are we continuing to hear so much doomsaying about climate change?
There are a lot of people in every age who think they know better than everyone else and, therefore, have a right to tell everyone how to live. In the 1950s, it was country-club and parish council busybodies with their strict moral codes. In the 1970s, it was social democrats with their fanciful economic theories. Today, it’s environmentalists.
Same instinct, different wrapper.
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As James Lovelock said recently, people always get weather confused with Global Warming. He puts the past cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere down to the melting of the Artic ice cap and the movement south of the melted ice water, cooling northern land masses. Nevertheless, he points out that the global average sea temperature is still rising – the only measure he considers pertinent.
At the beginning of the Millennium, our Met Office here in the UK predicted that Global Warming would produce much colder wetter winters, because the Gulf Stream (a body of warm water on our western shores) would move away and we would then experience a similar climate to others on the same latitude, such as er……Canada. Therefore, our unusually cold and wet winter is seen as evidence that Global Warming is actually happening !
Who knows ? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we should bear in mind: ‘one swallow does not make a summer’.
I DON’T believe it. This has the feel of something that will be retracted/corrected.
Two new cold records set last week in Vancouver and we had snow yesterday afternoon.
I didn’t know Al Gore was in town.
Just weather, not climate. Nothing to see. Move along. Shame on you, Anthony, for this anecdotal drivel 🙂
Zap! You’re frozen!
…-
“‘Frozen in fear over climate change'”
“SCIENTISTS say they are haunted by the failure to convey to the world just how close Earth is to climate catastrophe.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2207432/posts
i enjoyed the story….but this is not true:
“Even the Arctic sea ice, which has replaced hurricanes as the alarm of the moment ever since hurricanes ceased to threaten, has grown this winter to an extent not seen since around 1980.”
i wonder why he said that?
Record Minus 43 in Edmonton – It sure looks like GW is causing a black hole of cooling opposite to the UHI effect. Need a few million to study this.
Frederick Michael (04:45:39) :
I DON’T believe it. This has the feel of something that will be retracted/corrected.
Fred, which of the fourteen independent measurements do you think is responsible for the “error”?
It must be a tranmissible error disease:
“Fred from Canuckistan . . . (04:47:32) :
Two new cold records set last week in Vancouver and we had snow yesterday afternoon….”
The idea that the entire Earth is “a single, self-regulating system” has always struck me as vastly oversimplified if not just plain fanciful, just a step away from the preposterous sci-fi notion that the Earth is some kind of giant organism. Yet Lovelock “commands respect because he understood [this] decades before his peers.” Do any of his peers here accept this idea?
While we as part of Earth’s biota are fortunate that change generally comes slowly (from our short-lived and very small perspective) and that disruptions are generally smoothed out (except when they aren’t—ask the dinosaurs) from the perspective of geological time the surface of this planet is a turbulent, chaotic mix of complex processes. It is surprising to me that even sober scientists frequently appeal to ‘self-regulation’ and ‘balance’ in Earth’s climate. You have to wonder whether these are anything more than convenient fictions which make short-term analyses easier.
Just wonderin’. . .
/Mr Lynn
There are a lot of people in every age who think they know better than everyone else and, therefore, have a right to tell everyone how to live. In the 1950s, it was country-club and parish council busybodies with their strict moral codes. In the 1970s, it was social democrats with their fanciful economic theories. Today, it’s environmentalists.
This is way off base, just ranting. If AGW is discredited as a theory, there will still be a lot of environmentalists with perfectly reasonable arguments on a variety of issues. As for the swipe at social democrats and fanciful economic theories, one could make the same remark about laissez faire free markerteers.
Stick to the science – leave the economics and social critiques to people who are have some background in those fields.
BTW…I know this text was not written by AW, but my comments apply to lots of what is said here, I think, mostly by commenters on his posts.
EricH (23:06:14) said :
I guess all that money spent trying to correct AGW so far is having an effect; or so their propaganda will claim. Just how cold do they want it to get before they will be happy?
COULDN’T AGREE MORE.
Try to get an AGW acolyte to answer this question;
What set of data would convince you that “global warming” is NOT man-made?
I ask that of EVERYONE who evens whispers “carbon” in my presence. So far, NOBODY has answered. NOBODY. [obligatory Federally mandated French translation for our Canadian Friends: PERSONNE! (I know how that drives Albertans nuts).]
I’m going to switch to EricH’s question: How cold does it have to get before you’re happy?
PS I accidentally discovered how to start a bar-fight in Calgary (correct pronunciation: Cal GARY); Suggest that the Meech Lake Accord was idiotic, and that Alberta and BC should secede and join the States as 51 and 52, eh?
Screw Ottawa. Screw the damned loonie (best said when the Loonie’s in the dumps and yanks are buying-up everything in sight)! We’d let you keep what you earn instead of giving it all to Kay Beckers and the Noofies, eh?
The “discussion” will simmer long enough for you to make it out the door before all hell breaks loose. Fawk (apparently an expletive referring to Guy Fawkes), where’s the damned yank who STARTED this, eh?
deadwood (23:17:41) :
That’s my concern too. Congress will be forced to pass cap and trade legislation regardless of scientific revelations or how world temps behave just to cover the cost of the stimulus package.
Central MN set another daily record last Mon., -15 F. Third daily record for the season, the coldest since 1994.
I love the smell of panicking warmists in the morning…
Stick to the science – leave the economics and social critiques to people who are have some background in those fields.
Like anyone who pays bills and has family or friends – i.e. has a stake in government decisions.
lichanos (05:27:47) :
Is this Sunday? I got the feeling that you were preaching from your pulpit; to bad your surmon is old and tired.
markm
“Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”
I don’t think Lincoln would necessarily have approved of “government by peer-reviewed Columbia educated elitists.”
I wish someone would mention the enormous reduction in greenhouse gas emission that has already happened this year with the closing and slowing of industries all over the world. I’m quite sure that the recession/depression has already accomplished for the climate hysterics what fifty years of cap and trade couldn’t do.
Next they will take credit for the current cooling trend by claiming it’s all because of the recession.
Epaminondas (01:36:04) :
Please see “How not to measure temperature” elsewhere on this site. The trouble is even the things we all “know” aren’t all that known. In fact the more I learn the less certain I become. We certainly don’t get our info from the weather channel.
You know, run #422 out of 655 on model version TTKR-F45 v1.2 at the University of GimmeGrantMoney predicted this would happen. The same model predicted that 10 years from now there will be no ice anywhere in the world and we’ll all be living the Alps and Rocky Mountains because the rest of the planet will be a watery wasteland.
So that proves it’s really just global warming.
Richard (04:41:58) :
“… Global Warming would produce much colder wetter winters, because the Gulf Stream (a body of warm water on our western shores) would move away and we would then experience a similar climate to others on the same latitude, such as er……Canada. Therefore, our unusually cold and wet winter is seen as evidence that Global Warming is actually happening !…”
GISS map of Dec-Feb 2009 temp anomalies showing water temps at or slightly above 1980 levels. Closest water body to Edmonton is quite a bit colder.
I’m with Graeme Rodaughan. Excellent points that stand out among other excellent points. Thanks, WUWT, for sharing this article. WUWT has become one of the sites I visit throughout the day, every day. Cool-headed rationalism, blunt observation, it’s all good.
I will say something that I have been thinking during the last years: It seems that temperatures have “migrated” downwards to Canada and, consequently, the lowest temperatures are not longer recorded in the north pole, and, at the “other side”, in Moscow winters became milder. Is this so?
One, they weren’t acidic to begin with. Two, they still aren’t anywhere close now. Three, if they were getting warmer, they should be becoming less saturated with CO2 the last time I heard.