NOAA monthly weather summaries normally describe the month in terms of their warmness ranking. April is looking like an interesting month, with remarkably consistent cold across the entire US. Much of the center of the country has been 2 to 6 degrees below normal. In parts of the Dakotas, 10 or more degrees below normal.
Perhaps the rest of the month will be much warmer? Not likely, NCEP forecasts continued cold through at least the 20th.
Will this month of severe global warming be described as the “100th warmest?”
In order to lead the public in the politically correct direction, the appropriate map colors must be used: click
[Note that only the map colors have been changed. The temps in both maps are the same.]
P Folkens (22:58:21) : Warmest April this year? It’s not even warmer than an average March yet. The local temps here at the north end of SF Bay are running below the March averages, both in high temp and low. Today’s temps are 5°C below the average highs for April and 2°C below the average April lows. (But, of course, that’s just weather.)
About 2 weeks ago I put in some tomatoes here in the South S.F. Bay area. One, a “Stupice” is cold tolerant. It did fine. Another “Fourth of July” not so tolerant but an ‘early type’ so not warmth dependent. Frost took it. We had an odd cold night with roofs having frost the next morning. At the nursery, they were spraying ‘cloud cover’ on the plants due to “the unusual cold harming some of the plants”… Plants don’t lie like computer models…
FWIW, I now have 3 tomatoes in and growing, but they are growing much more slowly than usual (despite Miracle Grow and the sunniest spot in the garden.) One, Siberia, is doing OK (it’s an exceptionally cold tolerant type) while the others are sulking and barely growing at all. Kale, cabbage, and lentils (all relatively cool tolerant) are doing fine. My ‘cold tolerant’ early purple pod green beans are about 1/2 up, but not very happy yet. Had enough heat to sprout them, then the cold returned and they are again sulking waiting for warmth. Peas are doing OK, though. Peas are cold tolerant.
So my garden (v.s. my well worn planting calendar) is telling me it’s colder than usual by several degrees… Oh, and my corn won’t sprout yet, despite being in starter pots on the sunny exterior shelf on an east facing window where the morning sun usually makes things extra warm reflecting off the window for a double dose… (It fries plants in summer if I don’t shade them).
I think SF bay area needs a darker shade of green on that “departure” map…
pwl (02:12:12) : How long does it take before “weather” is considered “climate”?
Aye, now there’s the rub… By convention, the fiction that climate is the 30 year average of weather is used. This is a lie, but was a convenient lie back when adding lots of data by hand was a pain and it was thought OK to cut off the grunt work at 30 years. To carry this forward into the modern era when we have computers to do that addition and know that there are 30+ year long weather cycles (PDO, AMO, etc.) is now a very convenient lie for the AGW advocates.
It’s the major reason, IMHO, that they can say we’ve had “warming”. Yes, we have. For about 30 years due to a 30 year weather cycle. We’re now headed into a 30 year (or so) cold weather cycle thanks to the PDO swap (rather like the cold period for the 30 ish years prior to the recent warm phase).
How long does it take before a shift in “weather” is statistically significant to “climate”? Clearly that depends on the time scales involved, yes? Averaging of weather temperatures over time scales of months, years, decades, centuries?
My answer would be “More than 3000 years since Bond Events are a 1500 year periodic oscillation of weather and you really ought to average at least 2 cycles.” if I had to give a year duration. But…
I’m of the opinion that Pamela has it exactly right: Your climate changes when you change your latitude, your altitude, your distance from the seas, move a mountain range, …
In other words: The Mediterranean has a “Mediterranean Climate” and has had it for thousands of years, even through the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, The cold Dark Ages, The warm Roman Optimum, the cold Iron Age Pessimum, etc. etc. as the very long cycle weather patterns played out. And it will continue to have a Mediterranean Climate for centuries to come. Only the weather will change…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/
Unusually cold start for April here in Portugal, some snow in parts of the country, although March was hot, albeit still within the average. December and January: very cold, lots of snow. I hadn’t seen snow in my city for 20 years. In January alone it snowed twice here. I have no idea what is going on.
“The last ten years have been the warmest in the history of the planet, and this year was one of the ten warmest years of the last decade.”
Warmest in the HISTORY OF THE PLANET? Wow! Goddard, You have got to step away from the Kool-Aid bowl long enough to get an education!
OTOH, it would be fun to see AGWers explain how the temps could be warmer now, with 387 ppm of CO2, than a few hundred million years ago when CO2 was 960,000 ppm.
Its been a cold April here in Michigan. However the Snow Bunny Family that we made in our front yard with the 7.5 inches of snow we got on April 6, is almost all melted, not that it has been that warm since.
On another point, we have gone more than 30 days since the last sunspots were recorded. Anybody know if that is the longes zero sunspot yet during this solar minimum?
The good news is that Global Warming may be over.
The bad news is that Global Warming may be over.
John Finn (00:49:31) : “Note that April in Europe, South America and large parts of Asia has been much warmer than normal so far. AMSU April temperatures are also still above the 1979-97 mean.”
I notice the switch of the ‘mean” from the infamous 1979 -2000 base line down to 1979 – 1997. I suppose that is to eliminate the warmer 1998 -2000 years that would push the mean up.
In any event, what is so special about the period 1979 – 1997 that makes one use it as a base line?
Very interesting.
In Europe, the exact opposite has been happening this April.
We’ve had a long and very snowy winter, with very high snowpack depths on the high mountains.
April, though, has been consistently sunny and warm to date, although snow may start to pass through the end of this week again.
I suspect you’ll find Europe will be above average.
Excuse me smokey, but I find it absolutely logical to put more-than-average temperatures in red and less-than average temperatures in blue. With the other scale, low positive anomalies appear green, which ofr some reason is seen as a “cold” color.
Flanagan et. al
Hate to rain on your warming parade again. This is what Dr. John Christy at UAH told me about the graphs you are looking at-
You can download the US monthly temperatures from the NOAA here (not easy to find).
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/CDODivisionalSelect.jsp
The actual US monthly temperature series has a huge amount of variation – March, 2009, for example, was 5.3F lower than March 2007.
The NOAA doesn’t provide US temps in the common Anomaly basis that we are used to (and given the variation, it is difficult to get anything useful out of it) but I have put the data together as a 12 month moving average which at least gives us something to review.
So, here is US temperatures going back to 1895 in Degrees F.
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8913/ustempsf.png
Here they are in Degrees C.
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9651/ustempsc.png
Note how much US temperatures have fallen in the last two years. Note that temps were just as warm (or even warmer) in the 1930s than today. Note that temps in the year 1900 were warmer than today. Also note that the trendline has been adjusted upwards by 0.425C from the original raw data.
I and my wife are avid Gardeners.We have old roses,some Floribundas, some Hyrd.Teas. Here in LaGrande,Oregon, we are zone 5a.(USDA) as I write it is snowing.
Again. The Weather is forcast to be in the 70’s next week we will see.I had NO tomatoes last summer.So now the new Greenhouse.Soon as it stops snowing..
If ever…
Meanwhile, in the real world, this on Reuters yesterday, Mon Apr 13, 2009:
Farmers face planting delays due to wet weather
Cold and rainy weather around the U.S. Midwest was keeping farmers out of their fields and delaying the start of corn planting …
Current field conditions could keep farmers from planting for up to 10 days in some areas … The cool temperatures around the region were keeping fields damp even in areas where it has not rained in a few days…
A year ago, U.S. farmers had only planted 2 percent of the corn crop by mid-April. The average for the prior five years was 7 percent. [Emphasis added.]
And this year it’s zero. Check the price of corn futures on the Merc. Flanagan, looks like the farmers disagree with Mr. Hansen.
Hansen et. al. can fake data all they want. Farmers are going to look at soil moisture and temperature before they plant. AGW on one side, farmers on the other. Who ya gonna believe?
BTW, I still predict the growing season will end early.
We’re spending to much money on all of this. What has it gotten us? If we could shift all of this horsepower from looking at polar bears and ice caps to energy efficiency, more crop production, better cars, and weight loss the world would be a better place. Everyone has to have somebody to hate somebody once said.
This was the first Easter here in Central Oklahoma that we have had to be indoors in well over a decade. Cold and rainy. We have had to cover the gardens twice due to ice and snow. And much like Mr. Smith, we are noticing that the tomatoes and peppers are just sitting there, doing nothing while the peas and lettuce are off gang-busters.
All that gobal warming is slowing them down, I know it. :/
Those of you living in the Midwest and the South are welcome to join me in Los Angeles; we need more sensible people living here. It has been much warmer than usual this winter, but a cold spell means I have fruit on all trees. It is still warm this April, 80 degrees F yesterday.
I have been working at understanding the ocean information re climate Bob Tisdale so kindly provides. Perhaps the warmth in Central Europe is because of the Atlantic Ocean? Bob and others can correct me — and I use everyday language. This is what I see in his charts:
N Atlantic, while turning down, still at 0.55C; multidecadal is down
S Atlantic, up and at 0.55C; multidecadal is down
N Pacific, way down
S Pacific, down
Indian, turning back up, always opposes N Pacific, Bob will tell us why at
some point.
Southern (Antarctic – I learned something else new), down below -0.4;
residual down significantly
Arctic, turning down after a big up
The downs win over the ups. Europeans can hope that the Atlantic Ocean does not lose the heat it holds today.
OT
I have Proof of Global Warming.
Toronto Mapleleafs have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967?
And, we all know it will be a cold day in H*** before they win again
Take Hope Toronto, the Earth is cooling!!!
Even though it’s been cold here too, I feel a lot hotter after reading GISS’s explanations. I print ’em and make a good fire, and it burns 10 degrees hotter than normal.
Somewhere else in the World it’s warmer than “normal”, and people are suffering! I blame Capitalism. /sarc
Global warming is like the Kevin Bacon game.
If your not familiar with the game it would work like this:
Someone knows this person who knows this person who knows Kevin Bacon.
Now take your stats no matter where you get them from and end it with: Which causes global warming.
Rhys,
Parts of Europe have been above normal, but the bulk – including Russia and Spain have been running cold.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.png
The theme song here in New Brunswick (east of Maine) was “I’m Dreaming of a White Easter”. It snowed on both Easter Sunday and Monday, light where I am (south-central, near Saint John) but enough to make driving risky on the E side of the province.
Definitely must be due to global warming.
I would say the last years has been the most shameful years for NOAA
According to the Nyquist principle the Nyquist rate is two times the bandwidth of a bandlimited signal or a bandlimited channel.
In case of a lowpass filter or baseband signal, the bandwidth is equal to its upper cutoff frequency.
If you wanted to look at climate rather than weather you would be looking at weather data filtered with a low pass filter that has a high frequency cut off that would toss out all the noise higher than at least the 30 year cycles like the PDO. When we talk about these cycles being 30 years long are we not really talking about the half cycle period? For example they are cold for about 30 years and then hot for about 30 years so the actual frequency would be a 60 year cycle, with each phase being about 30?
If we define climate as being temperature variations of very long period that eliminates the “noise” caused by relatively short term oscillations (in geological terms) like the 30-70 year weather cycles, then wouldn’t our minimum average period be 60-140 years to get a valid measure of climate ?
It sounds to me that they should adopt a definition that identifies what their definition of climate is in a given discussion. For example in toxicology they use the term LD-50 meaning the dose that kills 50% of the test subjects, in radioactivity they talk about the 1/2 life of an isotope.
To be meaningful shouldn’t climate scientists use a term like “Climate-15” that indicates that they want to ignore variations of higher frequency than 15 years?
If they did that, the geologists and the oceanographers etc. could talk apples to apples. Right now using that sort of symbolism the geographers are talking about climate-100meg and the NOAA folks are talking about climate-15 (using a 30 year average) or climate-60 for a full cycle.
Larry
The contrast can’t get any bigger:
While the world has entered a cooling phase the US President is sabotaging the US Economy fighting non existing run away Global Warming:
http://www.icecap.us to download the PDF file:
Apr 13, 2009
President Obama’s Red Sea
By Paul Driessen
Irresponsible federal spending, energy and climate change policies will bankrupt America! America is diving into a Marianas Trench of red ink. There is barely a digit of black anywhere on the balance sheet, and spendthrift lawmakers are closing off numerous sources of positive revenue. On the spending side of the ledger, the White House and Congress enacted a $700-billion financial bailout, followed by an earmark-laden $787-billion “stimulus” law and plans to ladle out $1.6 billion in federal government bonuses in 2009. Then came a $3.5 trillion “red sea” FY 2010 budget, and the prospect of $9.3 trillion in total indebtedness over the coming decade.
A March 31 Bloomberg study found that the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC and HUD have thus far obligated generations of Americans to $12.8 TRILLION in debt. That’s 90% of our nation’s entire 2008 Gross Domestic Product, notes columnist Deroy Murdock! It’s more accrued debt than 43 previous administrations combined, and it doesn’t include the cost of servicing this debt – or the US share of the $1.1 trillion “global stimulus” devised by the Group of 20, to be administered by professional spenders at the International Monetary Fund. Taxes will soar, to pay off these debts – and cover new levies on everything we do.
As 2,600 delegates flew greenhouse-gas-spewing jetliners to Bonn for another five-star-hotel UN climate change confab, envoy Todd Stern announced that the White House is “seized with the urgency”” of tackling runaway global warming. Looming on the horizon is a hulking 648-page House climate change bill. Equally monstrous Senate and EPA versions wait in the wings.
President Obama wants energy prices to “skyrocket,” to coerce Americans to slash carbon dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 – to levels last seen in 1905! He says cap-and-trade will “raise” $656 billion between 2012 and 2019, to fund green energy, green job and other government programs. The National Economic Council and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. It is a massive wealth transfer – extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family, and doled out by Congress and bureaucrats to politically favored constituencies. These all-intrusive energy taxes will hit poorest households hardest. Cap-and-tax will also clobber manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs. Twenty states get 60-98% of their electricity from coal. They form our manufacturing heartland, and every increase in electricity prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more homes forced into foreclosure, more families into welfare, and more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink.
Soaring gasoline and natural gas prices will do likewise. And for what? Hundreds of climate scientists say CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. They point out that even total elimination of US carbon dioxide emissions would quickly be offset by emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing nations. Two-thirds of Americans want our petroleum and nuclear energy developed. They want jobs, security, economic recovery, power that works 24/7. They don’t want to see America file for bankruptcy.
But their rights are being trampled on, by partisan totalitarians whose decrees violate America’s sacred traditions of open, robust debate, sound science and economics, accountability, and majority opinion on critical issues. Whatever happened to the bipartisanship and responsible government that voters thought they were electing last fall?
It’s time to say, enough!