Minus 13 degrees – the coldest it’s been in April
From Weatherzone – Brett Dutschke,
Wednesday April 29, 2009 – 14:58 EST
A new Australian record was set early this morning, a temperature of minus 13 degrees, at Charlotte Pass on the Snowy Mountains.
This is the lowest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia in April and is 13 below the average. Nearby at Perisher it dipped to minus 11 degrees and at the top of Thredbo it dipped to minus 10.
Across the border, on the Victorian Alps April records were broken at Mt Hotham where it chilled to minus eight degrees and Mt Buller and Falls Creek where it got as low as minus seven.
A few other locations set April low temperature records also. In Tasmania Lake Leake was as cold as minus six, Sheffield and Dover both reached minus one and Flinders island got to zero. Hobart had its coldest April night in 46 years, recording a low of 1.7 degrees, seven below average.
While much of inland NSW and Victoria will be colder tomorrow morning than it was this morning under clearer skies, the Alps should be a little warmer due to a rise in humidity.
Note, all temperatures in the story above are in Centigrade. Photo and map added by Anthony.
Here are the all-time highs and lows for the continent of Australia (source Perth Weather Center)
HIGHEST RECORDED TEMPERATURE:
- Oodnadatta, South Australia 50.7 C (123.3 F) on the 2nd January, 1960
LOWEST RECORDED TEMPERATURE:
- Charlotte Pass, New South Wales -23.0 C (-9.4 F) on the 29th June, 1994
While this is certainly a significant new cold record this early in Australia’s fall going on winter, one must always remember that weather is not climate. – Anthony
(h/t to WUWT reader “Chuck”)
Falls Creek, a resort just a little to the south of Charlotte’s Pass and Perisher in Victoria had 1metre of snow over the last 2 days. Unprecedented almost I would think for April. Also some of the same towns just north of Melbourne that were badly damaged by the fires in February have now also received snow.
Looking forward to a great ski season in Aus. As stated earlier at the time of the fires, our deadpan Climate Change Minister, “Penny Wong” reportedly said at the time of the fires that the fires were “Climate Change in action”. She’ll probably say that this cold weather is evidence of the variability of Climate Change. Thats the trouble, Global Warming (aka Climate Change) is a non-falsifiable theory, everything supports Climate Change.
Oh well, at least the skiing will be good. Perisher is a top spot if any people want to come over.
Don’t forget, those temps are all Celsius in Aus. We don’t refer to Centigrade in Australia.
I reiterate my post from another thread, it *has* been cold this spring, summer and now autum is proving to be quite noticeably colder thans last year here further east in Sydney. Winter will be cold too, it’s inevitable as we move further away from a “quiet” Sun. Seems to strike a familiar cord with the NH, so much snow, in your winter.
Oz, the giant cruise ship heading for Antarctica !
Also, we don’t use the term “Fall” in Aus at all. It is “Autumn”.
I clearly remember the hot records that were broken in Australia at several locations were not reported here at all, although they were all-time absolute maximum temperatures. Now, a record cold for April is the headline. Weather is not climate, we all agree on this. But where does this tendency to “forget” hot records come from?
REPLY: I dunno “Flanagan” where does your tendency to be an annoying phantom Internet troll coward come from? People send me things, I notice things, I report them, such as the recent California heat wave and the recent cold snap in Australia.
Ask the New York Times why they reported on the California heat wave and not the Australian April low. Lets see it Flanagan, put that question to them and post the answer here. Do something useful that backs up your snark for a change.
My point to you: If you don’t like what is or is not reported here, don’t visit. – Anthony Watts
I can see the headlines now…”Ozone Depletions Responsible for Record Low in Australia.”
We all know that record highs (no matter how localised) are proof of global climate change and proof of man = bad and record lows are proof of temporary changes in local weather = irrelevant . This is the AGW Alarmist viewpoint and nothing short of a return to a full blown ice-age will change that.
I look at this Bureau of Meteeorology graph for Southern Hemisphere cooling and I reckon we are in for a cold one here in Western Australia this winter.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/g_timeseries.cgi?variable=global_t®ion=sh&season=0112
It will be very telling if Bluff Knoll, the 1,000 metre high point in WA’s southwest gets more than its usual one or two days of snow. This has not happened in the 29 years that I have been here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff_Knoll
http://www.feargod.net/wa-snow2a.php
If this were 13 degrees above average and a new warm record for Australia it would be milked by the AGW religion till the cows came home. Just like the Victorian Bushfires got blamed on AGW when it was simply a stationary high pressure system in the Tasman redirecting hot air from up north. With a cooling PDO, quiet sun and Lake Eyre filling it looks like being a cold, wet (read snowy) year for Australia. But then last year Mt Ruapehu in NZ had a 5m snow depth record – 1.5m more than the snow record pole – so I suppose its not that unusual 🙂
Isn’t the northern hemisphere still getting significant snowfalls?
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=MT&prodtype=warnings
So we are getting winter conditions in both hemispheres at once – isn’t this at least a little worrying!
“Trevor (05:18:35) :
Also, we don’t use the term “Fall” in Aus at all. It is “Autumn”.”
I leave the “n” off Autumn so as not to confuse people. That’s my excuse and I am stciking to it *ahem*.
Silly Aussies. Don’t you know the SH temperature anomoly for April is going to be +0.3?
Leave it those folks down under — always having to do things in a big way. Wonder how many winter weather records they’ll smash this winter season.
vukcevic (05:17:27) : Oz, the giant cruise ship heading for Antarctica !
So…you are really insinuating something very important: For it to be true temperatures should have “migrated” southwards: From antarctica to Canada, from Canada to the USA, the equator way south (The magnetic equator it is at latitude 12°30´south) . Does temperatures follow magnetic fields?
Off the topic … can someone tell me where sunspot data was collected earlier in the 20th century (e.g. 1913) … where were the observatories located?
Jon
Trevor give us a break with the semantics Gerard also in OZ
vukcevic (05:17:27) I forgot to follow going down: The south pole then would be traveling to Australia !!
vukcevic (05:17:27) In my 1st.post where antarctica, read Artic.
How much colder will it get if we don’t stop AGW now?
“. . . one must always remember that weather is not climate. – Anthony”
Unless we are members of congress – then it is “climate change” or “evaporation”.
I actually heard about this first on the ABC news (Aus), which is a little surprising as its usually the first to jump on the warming bandwagon.
Australia’s climate can be found in any Atlas or 5th grade geography text book. It has not changed. There have been weather pattern variation, but no climate change. Unless someone managed to shove the continent (or just parts of it) to a different latitude, longitude, and/or altitude. In my opinion, the only thing worth discussing is weather pattern variation. Carry on Anthony. You post exactly the kinds of topics I LOVE to read and discuss.
Good photo – but surely the snow cover thickness is thin and surely it is only first or second year snow.
Things have been a bit wintery in Montana this late April too: http://rwis.mdt.mt.gov/scanweb/swframe.asp?Pageid=RPUStatus&Units=English&Groupid=301000&Siteid=301001&DisplayClass=Java&SenType=All;
Also, see: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20090429/NEWS01/904290301
===================
Monday evening, the flakes started falling. By Tuesday night, the snowfall was within striking distance of a record for the calendar date. By 9:30 Tuesday evening, the National Weather Service office in Great Falls had recorded more than 6 inches of snow since the storm began, and more than 5 inches since the stroke of midnight.
The record for April 28 in Great Falls stood at 7.7 inches, and with continuing steady snow predicted, meteorologist Dave Williamson said there was a good chance that record would fall.
He also predicted another six to 10 inches of snow before the storm tapers off, probably early Thursday morning.
“It has the potential of being a pretty good juicer,” he said.
The Browning and Babb areas are among the hardest hit so far, accumulating about 2 feet of snow, Williamson said. Hobson reported 10 inches and towns along the Rocky Mountain Front including Choteau and Dupuyer had a foot of snow.
Schools in Power and Conrad sent students home early Tuesday, and the Dutton/Brady, Power, Vaughn, Ulm, Fairfield and Sun River districts all canceled today’s classes.
=====================
So, if we have record cold and snow as far south as Australia and as far north as Montana at the same time, how much more GW can we stand???
Anthony, et al,
just thought you might want to know what was on the local news here in salt lake city last night – Mr. James Hansen was in town giving a presentation at the university of utah on global warming. at some point, Mr Hansen joined a support protest for a U of U student who disrupted an oil and gas bid process by the BLM, driving the price of selected parcels up substantially. Mr. DeChristopher, the student bid several million dollars knowingly and intentionly, not having the money to pay which cost legitimate bidders substantial amounts of money. the parcels in question were near national parks in utah – so the reason for the ‘protest’. Mr Hansen stated that he supported this civil disobedience because ‘ we dont have to extract every bit of oil and gas in this country’. you might want to take a look at the footage, it was on Fox news last night here in salt lake city.
rj
OOOOH, I just love when we talk about the weather!
After several non-summer trips to WET WINDY NZ (brrrr), I sure won’t be headed back thataway until January, knowing that the quiet sun is at least closer during SH summers, some 500,000km?
NZ reports 1400 excess winter deaths from cold. I’d like to hope for just enough cold worldwide to stop this AWG insanity in the press, but not enough to kill off children and elderly.
NOT Off Topic (unless you believe the Sun Doesn’t Count)
Cycle 24 just threw-up another minispot in the middle latitudes.
See Solarcycle24.com.
What’s the latest sunpot (days into the cycle) ever recorded?
Just wondering, as this almost seems WORSE than no spots at all.
It’s as if the spot polarity is meta-stable between the two cycles.
What would it mean, for example, if we are still seeing SC23 spots a year from now, say alternating with mini SC24 spots of roughly the same magnitude as we are seeing now? That can’t be good.
Houses are cheap in South Texas, y’all.
I guess it all depends on who is measuring what.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund:
MYTH: Recent cold winters and cool summers don’t feel like global warming to me.
FACT: While different pockets of the country have experienced some cold winters here and there, the overall trend is warmer winters.
Measurements show that over the last century the Earth’s climate has warmed overall, in all seasons, and in most regions. Climate skeptics mislead the public when they claim that the winter of 2003–2004 was the coldest ever in the northeastern United States. That winter was only the 33rd coldest in the region since records began in 1896. Furthermore, a single year of cold weather in one region of the globe is not an indication of a trend in the global climate, which refers to a long-term average over the entire planet.
But according to NOAA the warmth in the northeast may be OVERSTATED by the EDF: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/feb/12-02Regionalprank_pg.gif
And according to my own local measurements, both EDF and NOAA seem to SIGNIFICANTLY OVERSTATE the warmth:
February – http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/SbXauqg6nAI/AAAAAAAACv0/surdiEqfZzU/s1600-h/February+2009+Actual+Versus+Normal.JPG
January – http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/SYW37S0A1AI/AAAAAAAACsI/HQZGU8-TuVU/s1600-h/January+2009+Actual+Versus+Normal.JPG
December – http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/SVz6DhoxZmI/AAAAAAAACXY/cXJ3K3I_8Xc/s1600-h/December+2008+Actual+Versus+Normal.JPG
The 2 most significant things going on right now are subservient to the whim of the current agenda: AGW.
Cooling of the Globe and Waning of Solar Activity.
Like 2 trains on the same track going in opposite directions, the signals missed, the collision imminent & the damage will be significant. Not a simple derailing.
“If this were 13 degrees above average and a new warm record for Australia it would be…” ignored by this blog. You do love to highlight places where it’s colder than average, apparently with the aim of proving that the world is not warming. To assess the significance of these cold records, you could always read the quite perceptive analysis posted here.
After a very hot news-making week here in California, where many records were broken, we are now experiencing colder than normal temps, which do not make the news. To be fair, the lows aren’t as low as the highs were high..
Pat,
The Australian BOM claimed that we will have a mild winter. We will have to wait and see.
When I read this, I thought about
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/27/are-record-temperatures-abnormal/
No continental record high temperatures recorded since 1974. Any ideas on whether record low temperatures have been recorded?
I live in Fremantle Western Australia and I have to say that it certainly has not been a cool autumn here. We re now well into Autumn have had very little rain and temperaures are still aroun 26 Celsius. Please don’t forget WA in the “Australia widew stories” as many of us who live here who are very supportive of this blog’s ethos.
Global warming alarmists out in cold
Andrew Bolt
April 29, 2009
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25401759-5000117,00.html
Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your “proofs” are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.
And if your “proofs” indeed turn out to be false, don’t get angry with me.
Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?
So let’s see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.
“weather is not climate.”
Yes, I am aware of it. But all this cold from around the world the past 2 years is adding up to something.
This is confusing.
Hearing dire Australian govt and media pronouncements, I thought Australia was supposed to be the first major victim of AGW with the first wave of Aussie boat people due here is early 2010.
That’s why we should never pay attention to actual temperatures and just meditate on the models instead. It’s so much simpler.
How come your sunspot reader has ‘000’ sunspots for today but the spaceweather site has 11? Even their pic doesn’t show 11, only the one ‘protospot’ they had for yesterday.
It’s been a colder than average spring here as well. Usually have to run the a/c by now on a regular basis. Still waiting to plant my little tomatoes in the garden but the nights have been too chilly.
And we’ve had snow 3 winters in a row. Which hasn’t happened since the 1910’s.
Must be that evil old climate change. Cold is warm, wet is dry, humans are evil.
It’s amazing to me that the press excoriates the right wingers for not wanting anyone to have any fun (sex, drinking, smoking) but gives the gaia worshippers a pass on wanting everyone to simply stop breathing.
Now that the EPA has designated exhaling as polluting…can genocide be far behind?
twawki,
We have seen TWO winters with a preponderance of colder/snowier than normal weather events in the Northern Hemisphere and one…(going on two ?)… winters of colder/snowier than normal weather events in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Antarctic ice mass and extent appear to be much larger than normal. The Arctic ice mass and extent appear to be on a suprisingly fast rebound from the last five years.
The SST have leveled off over the past 6 years, the sea level rise appears to be leveling off as well and all the major temperature monitoring databases have shown a global decline the past 5-10 years.
The sun’s quiet period is extending daily into more rarified historic levels concerning magnetic fields/solar wind/solar wind speed/ sunspot proponderance/TSI, etc. and along with it the possibly associated cosmic ray-cloud impact all leaning toward less solar energy reaching the Earth than we may have seen in quite some time.
There have even been an increase in media majors willing to question the models/theory/science/hysteria about the all-consuming devotion to CO2-caused GW.
You think that maybe we should re-evaluate our current understanding of climate theory?
Let’s see what the rest of your Aussie winter delivers. A colder than normal season will add a tremendous doubt to the CO2 theory…
Jim
OT but we’re still getting cycle 23 sunspots!
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
meanwhile, the ESA has come up with another article on the Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegration…and area of “newly” formed icebergs about 700 sq. km in area.
Satellite imagery shows fragile Wilkins Ice Shelf destabilised
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMRAVANJTF_index_1.html
However, it is still unclear how the situation will evolve. Humbert noted that, “We are not sure if a new stable ice front will now form between Latady Island, Petrie Ice Rises and Dorsey Island. If the connection to Latady Island is lost, the projected loss of 3370 sq km of ice might be greater – though we have no indication that this will happen in the near future.”
….despite its uncertainty, we will mention it anyway. timed to facilitate passage of cap-and-tax legislation?
Cold here in Healesville, an hour and a half-ish drive north-east of Melbourne. Right now my fingers are so cold it’s hard to type. My heating bills are going to be horrendous this fall/winter season. I don’t remember previous Aprils being as cold; but then again, the 100+ days in February was a new one for me, too.
The high pressure system may have made it hot, but that didn’t cause all the fires. The two main bushfires were caused by a downed power line and an arsonist. My area was hit by the power line fire.
Are comments disabled?
Markedly quiet on the Temperature Profiles for the South Pole region.
Are they hitting -70 C as I have ‘heard in passing’??
Would this not be about 2 months early? (Usual -70 C at June/July?)
Quick, put more Coal into the Power Stations, get into your vehicles, get this planet back on WARMING now !!.
Meanwhile, take another look at the AMSR-E Ice Extent graph on this blog’s side bar. It’s colder on both sides, South and North.
Any theory that is deemed to be proven correct under all test conditions is either perfectly defined or not scentifically valid.
As the Warmists claim that all weather outcomes prove the validity of their theory. Can they also prove under challenge that their theory is perfectly defined ?
If they can’t then their theory is not robust enough to be considered valid.
Given the chaotic and multifaceted nature of the Earth’s Climate inluencing one variable, CO2, and expecting a result is analagous to expecting to alter the trajectory of an aircraft in flight by moving the tray table in front of your seat up and down.
Unfortunately, explaining this to most AGW believers is the same as talking to a brick wall. Yes, we joke about it here, but it’s painfully true.
I really never will understand the mindset that EVERYTHING different or outside of records MUST be bad, and caused by human activity… and more important, we have to do whatever we can to end it.
As I’ve posted before: Calgary had record snowfall this winter, records began in the 1870s… the mountains to the west are still white, just waiting for the spring melt to cause flooding along all the rivers, assuming we get enough warmth. This has been, and will continue to be, a cold time.
I mock those who keep harping about warming climate while we’re experiencing cold records much more frequently than warm.
Mark (07:47:03) : OT but we’re still getting cycle 23 sunspots!
Or…a cycle 25 spot due to high latitude. No one knows…
O/T Remember that sun speck fro a couple of days ago, it is still trying and trying. Spaceweather has now declared it a sun spot. You’ve gotta look hard to see it. It is more visible on the magnetogram; it is a cycle 23 Sun Speck that’ll probably fade before the day is out.
Pretty chilly “Down Under”. Maybe the sunspecks (Cycle 23?) forming today will blast a heat wave your way. 🙂
From Google earth: South magnetic pole is at 63° 29′ south latitude and 138° longitude (off Antarctica)….going up to Australia! 🙂
As for Australia, now I know why they’re called the Snowy Mountains. I never really associate snow and Australia.
“The D Man (07:17:35) :
Pat,
The Australian BOM claimed that we will have a mild winter. We will have to wait and see.”
Been a cool “summer”, cool “spring” and certainly cool into autum(n). Dooner out last night mate, that’s early for NSW.
Perth, Western Australia where I live has recorded the second warmest April on record. That is not to say it will not be a cold winter though. I also hope it will rain more because it has been a bit dry so far. But that’s weather!
“Ian (07:27:23) :
I live in Fremantle Western Australia and I have to say that it certainly has not been a cool autumn here. We re now well into Autumn have had very little rain and temperaures are still aroun 26 Celsius. Please don’t forget WA in the “Australia widew stories” as many of us who live here who are very supportive of this blog’s ethos.”
WA? It’s always hot there! The other issue is, WA is a 1/3 of the land mass of Aus, and only 10 people live there!!
PS. OK! Sorry, I forgot Perth!
All I ever see in the mainstream media are examples of unusually warm weather, so it is a good corrective to see examples of unusually cold weather.
In keeping with the topic:
Frost on my rooftop in the San Francisco East Bay this morning !!
Does anyone have a friend in the MSM that could tell them why this hoax is continuing ?? Is it orchestrated from above, irresponsible journalism, selling ads, or just plain shoddy, “meet-a-deadline” work ??
In fairness to the local media here, during the heatwave several days ago, I did not see one polar bear on the news, so maybe they’re beginning to see that something’s up.
I recently received an e-mail from and old, but not particularly close friend who works for Reuters. I took the opportunity to ask him, but got no response.
Flanagan,
You know your mentioning “weather is not climate” wouldn’t be so lame if it hadn’t been already echoed 10,000 times by warmers.
But worse and more lame is that warmers have used every conceivable weather observation themselves to show AGW is happening. There is nothing they won’t throw on the pile they build. All while ignoring the weakened and collapsing foundation their AGW movement sits upon.
Hurricane Katrina, heat waves in France, fires in Australia, evapoarting ice caps, ocean dead zones, climate refugees, disappearing islands, species extinction, vanishing snow packs, loss of fresh water supplies, crop loss, more poverty, famine and wars, on and on and on. All of which have been linked to human fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions with little or no scientific basis at all.
So while you suggest there is some problem with a discussion about record cold, the AGW movement churns out a tsunami of absurdity and dishonesty that far exceeds, 100 fold, whatever you perceive happening in the skeptics camp.
saltator said:
It is not unusual for one side of a continent to experience different conditions than the other.
The East of Australia is affected by conditions in the Pacific, while the West is affected by Indian Ocean conditions, and so forth.
Sonicfrog (07:01:54) : “After a very hot news-making week here in California, where many records were broken, we are now experiencing colder than normal temps, which do not make the news. To be fair, the lows aren’t as low as the highs were high..”
True, but what is important in these weather events is that the three-day hot spell was due to an anomalous high pressure that sat over the state, compressing the air mass and heating it up. (CO2 was not involved.) The 7-11°F cooler-than-normal temps we’re experiencing now are part of a normal April/May weather pattern, only substantially cooler. Do you understand the subtile difference—anomalously hot vs normal, but cooler?
Also, the Central California sea temp is 5°C cooler than is typical this time of year because the wind/coriolis effect is bringing up cold benthic waters to the surface. Plankton swarms are being seen now in Monterey Bay which portends a good rorqual summer (blue and humpback whales in our neighborhood) and strong sea bird breeding on the Farallon Islands. These are conditions more similar to the late 1970s than the 1990s or earlier this century.
BTW: the cooler temps are not leading the news, but every weather cast I’ve seen these past few days has mentioned the unusually cooler temps.
OT NEWS: Gavin (RC) seems to admit, for the moment and until he gathers aditional information, that the Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse may not cause any significant sea level rise. See comments 601 and 602 on the “Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse” topic, at Real Climate (no link provided to avoid spam filters, but the topic is the 6th most recent one, from April the 6th).
BRUCE HALL
Yousaid
FACT: While different pockets of the country have experienced some cold winters here and there, the overall trend is warmer winters.
Your first mistake is to rely on Enviornmental Defence Fund for climate data. Seek out various reliable original sources and do your own research on what is happening to global temperatures . No one disputes a gradual warming of the planet over the last century. What is being debated is what has been happened during the last 30 years and what is behind this latest warming period which only lasted 1994-2008 and is not indicative of long term climate patterns at all . The globe has been cooling since 2002 and you can find plenty of evidence of this cooling across the globe including global oceans and atmosphere. The graph below illustrates this cooling as documented by three organizations that monitor temperatures.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2003/plot/rss/from:2003/plot/gistemp/from:2003/plot/uah/from:2003/trend/plot/rss/from:2003/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2003/trend
Adolfo Giurfa (06:09:07) :
vukcevic (05:17:27) In my 1st.post where antarctica, read Artic.
Señor Guirfa
Erroneous writing is also one of my privileges. I too had recently some good Spanish wine. As good Doc Leif knows, I am man of outrages ideas.
Land of Oz is freezing due to the global warming. I am being serious ‘onest!
If the Antarctica ice is melting, all that extra cold water pouring in, causes the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to spread out, blocking circulation of warm water from Indian and Pacific Oceans between Ozy and Kiwi lands.
http://sealevel2.jpl.nasa.gov/jr_oceanographer/images/o-zlotncki-oceancir.jpg
If I was Ozy, I would start believing in the global worming.
Loss of the Christmas merriment on the Bondai beach would be a great national tragedy.
ski report
“it’s snowing all over the world”
http://www.ifyouski.com/news/newsarticle/?ObjectID=8721516
There’s a treasure trove of information about western Australia at http://www.waclimate.net/
For example:
Perth
(capital city population 2008 – 1.6 million / population history)
1897-1910 at Perth Regional
(elevation 19m, 14 years)
Average mean minimum 12.8
Average mean maximum 22.8
1921-1950 (30 years) / min 13.0 / max 23.2
1931-1960 (30 years) / min 13.0 / max 23.3
1941-1970 (30 years) / min 13.1 / max 23.3
1951-1980 (30 years) / min 13.5 / max 23.6
1961-1990 (30 years) / min 14.0 / max 23.9
1971-1992 (21 years) / min 14.2 / max 24.1
Relocation to Perth Metro
(elevation 25m, 4km distance)
1994-2008 (15 years)
Average mean minimum 12.6
Average mean maximum 24.5
AGW or UHI? UHI apparently. Some of the inland small towns show much less:
Kellerberrin [Not very far from Perth]
(elevation 250m, shire population 2006 – 866)
1911-1930 (21 years surveyed)
Average mean minimum 10.5
Average mean maximum 25.1
1921-1950 (30 years) / min 10.8 / max 25.2
1931-1960 (30 years) / min 10.9 / max 25.0
1941-1970 (30 years) / min 11.1 / max 24.8
1951-1980 (30 years) / min 11.2 / max 24.9
1961-1990 (27 years) / min 11.2 / max 25.0
1971-2000 (28 years)
Average mean minimum 11.1
Average mean maximum 25.1
—————-
Marble Bar
(elevation 182m, shire population 2006 – 194)
Historically the hottest town in Australia, possibly the world
1901-1930 (30 years surveyed)
Average mean minimum 19.7
Average mean maximum 35.6
1921-1950 (30 years) / min 19.6 / max 35.5
1931-1960 (30 years) / min 19.7 / max 35.4
1941-1970 (30 years) / min 19.6 / max 35.2
1951-1980 (30 years) / min 19.9 / max 35.1
1961-1990 (30 years) / min 20.1 / max 35.0
1971-2000 (30 years)
Average mean minimum 20.4
Average mean maximum 35.1
Sorry, OT – but the Catlin site reported this morning that the team is spending its 6th day in the tents, waiting to be resupplied and living on low calorie rations. Their position this morning is given as ~7 km NW of yesterday’s, however. Hmmmm…isn’t that a long way to drift overnight? Perhaps somebody can confirm this possibility.
Flanagan (05:25:37) :
If it gets any warmer…..
“…hot records that were broken in Australia at several locations were not reported here at all…”
“…If this were 13 degrees above average and a new warm record for Australia it would be…” ignored by this blog…
I think you guys are intentionally misunderstanding the point. You know very well that we can turn on the TV or go to a hundred different weather websites and find headlines proclaiming the latest heat record. Here’s a few headlines you might enjoy more:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2009-04-20-california-record-heat_N.htm
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1876299,00.html
So do you plan to take issue with them also? If not, why not? What they’re doing is exactly the same thing WattsUp is doing, i.e. presenting evidence to support a point of view about a current issue.
The difference is, this is a personal blog in which viewpoints are presented that are interesting to the author; USA Today and Time Magazine are mainstream news outlets pretending to report stories without interjecting any point of view.
It is their headlines that you should be complaining about. Although personally I kind of liked this one. WHAT were they blaming both droughts and floods on??? 😉
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
O/T
Yep, that’s a pretty solid SC23 sunspeck all right; southern hemisphere, low latitude, right magnetic signature. Or, as solarcycle24.com puts it, “Like a bad ex-lover… Cycle 23 will just not let go.”
It’s also been picked up by Catania, so it’s sure to get counted by SIDC. Not yet picked up by SWPC as of 1718 UTC, but that could change.
Paul James (08:10:46) :
Given the chaotic and multifaceted nature of the Earth’s Climate inluencing one variable, CO2, and expecting a result is analagous to expecting to alter the trajectory of an aircraft in flight by moving the tray table in front of your seat up and down.
Probably true, but this analogy lacks the fear factor. Try this one: … is analogous to expecting to alter the trajectory of an aircraft in flight by using your cell phone or iPod.
When fear is involved you can get the majority to go along with just about anything by using the Precautionary Principle.
vukcevic (09:34:01) : You surely are the one culprit for the state of the Sun, you have the Sun kind of dizzy because of your wavy equation..:)
Flanagan (05:25:37) Just don’t worry, those hot temps that are haunting you are only the consequence of a well known paradoxical weather effect recently named after its provoker: the “Gore Effect”.
Off topic but IMPORTANT:
The Third International Conference on Climate Change will be held in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009
http://www.heartland.org/events/WashingtonDC09/index.html
Ah, but, but, but, Oz is seeing record lows for the entire continent! I would suggest that this is something a little out of the norm. How frequently do temperature records fall for an entire continent at the same time? While this certainly is not out of normal possibility, what exactly are the odds?
And I find it interesting that similar such happenings also occurred this past winter here in the US. While again, this is probably not out of the realm of nature variability (as all climate and weather is), I do believe it is an interesting topic and one worthy of the attention Anthony has given it here.
And to clarify why there were likely no postings about record highs in Oz, first, they were not continent wide (happening at a single moment), and secondly, why should Anthony regurgitate the very same story that we were all bombarded with 24/7 by the MSM? That would seem rather mute to me.
This is an interesting anomaly and worth discussing and speculating about!
Keep up the good work Anthony!
Had a nice dump of snow in Blue Mtns. of NE Oregon my favorite Ski area
Anthony lakes – is closed. When had that western warm spell it’s now back to
March in late April.What I have noticed,(Warmist heresy warning-anechtdotal
tale-about to be told about-Weather-) .One of the things I have noticed is some of our local records-high and low date back to the late 40’s-when my pop and the local graingrowers were seriously considering Barley as a cash crop-as nothng would mature fast enough.I fear that this comong winter may be worse
than ’48,-’56. Is this a World wide phenom? hmm?..
vukcevic,
since Antarticat is growing, not melting away, perhaps you can rationalize yet another explanation as to why a cooling Oz is really AGW?
And enjoy the vino tinto, mi amigo ;^).
What is the latitude of Charlotte Pass? Wiki does not show.
OT Meanwhile not looking out the window
Article in Nature concludes that we can only burn 25% of the remaining carbon fuels or risk catastrophic……
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-04-29-climate-emissions-limit_N.htm
I guess the cycle 23 sunspots today are driving the climate at an unusual rate.
Looks like things are turning around for Australia!!
Dill Weed
Speaking of temperatures… here is an email I sent…
Mike Bryant
(ME)@yahoo.com
Subject: Timeliness
Message: Is there a reason that this nice website has not been updated on the temperature records? Is anyone taking care of this site? Perhaps I can get an answer from the site administrator. It is very difficult to explain this laxity to my students.
Referring Page: http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm
And response:
Flag this messageRe: GCCq: TimelinessWednesday, April 29, 2009 11:04 AMFrom: “Jackson, Randal K” Add sender to Contacts To: “(ME).com” Dear Mike,
Thanks for your comments. The global average temperature chart has been updated to include 2008:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#GlobalTemperature
Best regards,
—
Randal Jackson
Senior Interactive Media Producer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov
Now maybe they can straighten up the rest of that website…
But… but… but… a month of low temperatures is ONLY a month of weather… and has nothing to do with climate… other than it being a very frigging cold winter for that area with record lows for the month…!!!
Weather is climate is weather.
What the heck is going on, Australia was where I was going to go when the new ice age descends upon Canada. Now I have to pick someplace else to seek refuge. I gather that Costa Rica and Panama will get very densely populated…
Douglas DC (10:47:13) :It seems that we are repeating the 1956 weather conditions..as PDO it is entering in its cold phase, watch the third graph, starting from above:
http://www.stormx.com/agriculture/severe-weather/2009/04/the-pacific-oceans-influence-on-climate-change-how-low-will-the-pdo-go/
hunter (10:53:30) :
” vukcevic,
since Antarticat is growing, not melting away, perhaps you can rationalize yet another explanation as to why a cooling Oz is really AGW? ”
In the last few weeks there were numerous reports of the Wilkins ice shelf detaching itself from Antarctica. Although these reports are partially correct, probably details are inaccurate, there is always possibility that actually Antarctica is detaching itself from the Wilkins ice shelf and slowly drifting in the North direction. I need help here from my Ozy friends; is Australia NE or NW from Antarctica or … ?
RonPE (11:25:26) :
37° South , about 1,800 miles north from south magnetic pole.
vukcevic (09:34:01) South pole it is indeed travelling to Australia:
South Magnetic Pole (1998) 64°36′S 138°30′E
(2004 est) 63°30′S 138°00′E
Mike Bryant
Wow, did you see the drop in temp, CO and sea levels?
I love the way they do those graphs to get the max eye popping effect and how the mini ice age is the start of the temp. graph.
100ppm of CO2? It’s a joke to think that’s causing global warming. Does not matter though, the voters put Obama in control like a dictator and Cap and Tax is coming soon.
OT: A TRIVIA for all:
Where does the Sun SIT ON?
Not a joke. Answer must be actual, real, without any shade of doubt.
Answer..a few posts below.
Trevor (05:16:39)
. . . temperatures in the story above are in Centigrade
“Centigrade” – I still say that frequently. It’s and age thing, I guess, rather then geographical because on that score we in the USA still use the Fahrenheit scale.
Leon Brozyna (10:20:56) : said,
O/T
Yep, that’s a pretty solid SC23 sunspeck all right; southern hemisphere, low latitude, right magnetic signature. Or, as solarcycle24.com puts it, “Like a bad ex-lover… Cycle 23 will just not let go.”
It’s also been picked up by Catania, so it’s sure to get counted by SIDC. Not yet picked up by SWPC as of 1718 UTC, but that could change.
Yes but would it have been seen back in the 1600`s.
Adolfo Giurfa
thanks for the link, good info. I wonder how NASA and Gore feel about this info, they must be panicked to get Cap and Tax in before it cools too much.
I can accept this. Seeing as how 25% of the remaining carbon fuels should last us oh, about 2 million years or so, that seems pretty acceptable to me. I will worry about AGW then .. In the meantime .. Don’t worry, be happy!
Trevor (05:18:35) wrote:
”
Also, we don’t use the term “Fall” in Aus at all. It is “Autumn”.”
Too bad. Here’s Henry Fowler’s opinion, from The King’s English, p. 33:
“Fall is better on its merits than Autumn, in every way. It is short, Saxon (like the other three season names), picturesque. It reveals its derivation to everyone who uses it, not to the scholar only, like autumn; and we once had as good a right to use it as the Americans; but we have chosen to let the right lapse ….”
Blessed be the net,as it has saved me from the gospel according to Gore.
Just like last spring
http://www.timberlinelodge.com/conditions/
Snowing 29 degrees
NEW SNOWFALL (in past 24 hours): 9 in.
SNOWFALL (in past 72 hours): 10 in.
BASE DEPTH: 194 in.
ANNUAL SNOWFALL: 640 in.
jon (06:06:31) sunspot data
This may not be quite what you want but it is interesting:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:bwB0RZgFlkoJ:www.aavso.org/publications/ejaavso/v31n1/48.ps+Waldmeier,+M.:+1961,+The+Sunspot+Activity&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
A History of the Zurich and American Relative SunspotNumber Indices
Minus 13° C. in April is the equivalent of – 13° in October in the Northern Hemisphere. That would be extremely cold so early in the pre-winter season here. Or should I say the post-summer season?
Flanagan:
For the 10´th time: The overall cover from the media concerning climate/weather is SO focussed on the warmth!! Even you must have noticed that. So íf you want some kind of justice, do not seek one of the only placed where a little truth about the cold events can be seen!!
If you want balance, you should attack all the medias hyping warming warming warming.
Have you EVER complained over medias with too many warming stories?
If not, look in a mirror an see how balanced you are yourself.
The medias are obviously overdoing the warming stories, so Anthonys alternative viewpoint IS a way to balance things just a tiny little bit.
AND as Anthony writes, he also covers some warm events.
“weather is not climate”
However, climate is the average of weather. So, you could say that climate is nothing without weather.
The word ‘Fall’ for Autumn was used during Henry VIII’s time. Yes, really. So it’s a very English word, not American.
Answer to the Trivia (above)
The Sun sits on the Apex!
Montana buried under 4 feet of snow with 12 foot drifts closing roads.
Just more minor irrelevant weather.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090429/ap_on_re_us/us_severe_weather
as agw is supposed to particularly increase lowtemperatures (and thereby being extremely beneficial for plant growth), this downward leap is remarkable.
(probably more remarkable than the cyclon and uhi supported high’s a few weeks ago.)
Just to satisfy my inner Flanagan, I did an informal Google survey by seeing how many hits one gets with the following search items:
+”record high temperature” +”global warming” –> 9900 hits
+”record low temperature” +”global cooling” –> 1060 hits
But, of course we all know that weather is not climate, local ice conditions near the Catlin campsite are not climate, climate models are not climate, …
Whopper of a Snowstorm
“At St. Mary, an outpost 40 miles to the west of Cut Bank, the storm dumped 5 feet of snow! Can you imagine getting 60 inches of snow in a couple of days? . . .The snowstorm is winding down now, but travel conditions over the mountain passes of western Montana are still bad to impossible.”
Nice spring weather!
Did anyone see this hilarious video of Hansen et. al. on a Climate Change march? Apparently Climate Change is killing people in the Southern Hemisphere. Is that because they’re all growing bio-fuels?!!!
David Hagen-
Here’s what it currently looks like just east of East Glacier: http://rwis.mdt.mt.gov/scanweb/swframe.asp?Pageid=RPUStatus&Units=English&Groupid=629000&Siteid=629002&DisplayClass=Java&SenType=All;
The solid red lines are the closed roads. I-15 is closed from Shelby to just north of Great Falls. http://www.mdt.mt.gov/travinfo/map/gtfmap_frame.html
While the news is out that Charlotte Pass in Australia has recorded a new minimum low for April, what seems to have slipped through the net is that the nearby resorts of Mt Hotham and Thredbo recorded the lowest maximum temperatures for April only a few days earlier (-3C). Charlotte Pass also recorded it’s lowest ever April maximum on the 26th (-2C).
OT: Latest advice from Al Gore from Tromsø, Norway
– Keep The Snow White
http://www.aftenposten.no/klima/article3050818.ece
Apparently, that will stop climate change. Suddenly it is as important as CO2.
Google translate
http://tinyurl.com/dm9348
If the Antarctic ice extent keeps growing, we can expect some more low temp records in Australia over the entire winter and next year, too. Watch for New Zealand’s glaciers to start expanding again, too. It may be that NZ’s AGW scientist got fired just in time to rescue him from the turnaround. By the way, the latest world glacier monitoring is for 2007- WUWT?
Remember that South Africa had significant snow falls in Cape town and Jo’burg in their SH winter of 2007. I forecasting they will get this “rare” event again this SH winter. I made tongue-in-cheek longterm weather forecasts in Summer 2007 in Canada that the next few winters would be colder and that the following summers would be cooler than average based on the cold winter experienced in the SH . I amazed friends and family who blamed me for the cold winter and all the rainy cool summer weekends during the summer of 2008. I’m still batting 1000 after this winter! Not bad for a geologist-mining engineer! I shall boldy forecast another lousy summer in Canada followed by a cold winter. What the heck, with L.A. in the 50s, I’m going to forecast a cool summer for there, too.
Robinson (14:05:02) :Yes, they are many projects to produce bio-fuels down here….to sell’em to global warming “gringos” believers
There aren’t any mountains in Australia; the picture has to be a fake. The Kosciusco knoll is the highest point, and you can drive right past itm if they haven’t cut the grass for a while.
Those Aussies are a bunch of wild exaggerators !
Ya Gots to go to New Zealand if you want to see Mountains in the Pacific.
George
To all of you who think that “climate is not weather” and that “weather is not climate” learn to think again and embrace the state of the art where there is really no relevant crisp distinction between the two words.
“The steadily increasing resolution of GCMs is blurring the already fuzzy distinction between weather and climate.” – David Lindley..
Then check out these: weather, climate and the limits of predictability articles.
+”record high temperature” +”global warming” –> 9900 hits
+”record low temperature” +”global cooling” –> 1060 hits
or:
+”record low temperature” +”global WARMING”->2960 hits
We are of course “Living in the Shadows of [Climate] Soothsayers”. Waiting till the future arrives is sometimes the only way to predict the future [which is true of climate], especially with Natural Systems! Stephen Wolfram proved that in his book, ‘A New Kind of Science’.
George E. Smith (14:23:20) :
There aren’t any mountains in Australia; the picture has to be a fake. The Kosciusco knoll is the highest point, and you can drive right past itm if they haven’t cut the grass for a while.
It must Courchevel, France where they had 80cms of snow today according to a friend who has a Gite there.
“The steadily increasing resolution of GCMs is blurring the already fuzzy distinction between weather and climate.” – David Lindley..”
I believe “fuzzy” is the operative word here…
We should start a list of things that are not climate…
NSIDC data are not climate.
EPA CO2 declarations are not climate.
Sloppy GISS surface temperature data records are not climate.
(…continue…)
twawki asked if the northern hemisphere was not also getting some mid-spring snow.
Yep. We had some record snows on the south slopes of the Alps here in Switzerland over the past few days.
That’s only “weather”, of course (“background noise”), but if we have a hot spell somewhere this summer it will be “climate” (and proof of rampant AGW).
Max
Re: Flanagan
Lets be absolutely clear on this, Australia has not recently set any Australia wide all time record highs.
Anthony: It would be useless for you to post about record high temperatures as you’d have to go live in a cave to not hear about them. Thanks for posting this though; I’m not optimistic about hearing it from any other source despite the fact that it’s ‘only weather’.
Anthony,
Weather is apparently climate in Germany where record high temperatures for April have apparently been recorded:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=ahs1ryfnjpW8&refer=germany
According to the article in Bloomberg (!) that country’s climate agency head Wolfgang Kusch was quoted as saying that:
“The climate train is not only rolling along, it’s going even faster,” Kusch told reporters in Berlin yesterday, blaming higher atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning oil and coal.
Thank God the GCM’s are resolving all of that!
Can’t be the Gore effect as he is only due in Australia in July.
(Sorry the link got messed up somehow… no preview at this blog).
When you say “what’s the weather today” you are in effect saying “what is the climate like today”…
The steadily increasing resolution of GCMs is blurring the already fuzzy distinction between weather and climate – David Lindley.
“Flanagan (05:25:37) : I clearly remember the hot records that were broken in Australia…”
That was weather. It wasn’t climate.
It also was from UHI.
What people are missing about this snow in Australia is that Australia has also moved 7 centimetres north east towards the equator since the same time last year. It should therefore be slightly warmer! Worrying.
“Leon Brozyna (05:58:25) : Leave it those folks down under — always having to do things in a big way. Wonder how many winter weather records they’ll smash this winter season.”
If they want to pass what happened in the US this past winter they’ve got their work cut out for them! Some cold records were broken by 6 F degrees. And it happened on more than one occasion. There were many cold records and snow fall records broken.
And what about the record in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where the cold record was broken by 12 C (not F) degrees about 6 weeks ago?
ref :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=edmonton
Anthony,
Has there been confirmation on that record in Edmonton yet?
Gene
If I was Ozy, I would start believing in the global worming….
—–
Crud.
Now I gotta worry about Vukevic’s antarcticats AND his global worming…… At the same time even.
But, but it’s a good thing that Australia isn’t connected to our electric grid – Iffen they were, all their AC power would going backwards half the time and the wrong direction the other half of the time pushing all their electrons backwards – and their darkbulbs would be emitting large amounts of negative heavy making it very hard to see after the sun rises.
From 2000 to 2007 I typically used just under 1 metric ton of firewood over winter for my heating. In 2008 I used 2.5 tons of firewood and switched to electrical in early September. Usually I start using the fireplace around mid May and finish early October. This year I started using the fireplace in mid April and I expect to use at least 3 tons if the cool weather continues. Just a personal account of the cold winters since 2008.
I can tell you It’s cold in Melbourne this morning. I wonder how cold it would have been without UHI
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbourne-records-coldest-april-morning-since-1957/11797
Know our cold is nothing like that in other countries but for us its unusual. Our frosts are 1 month early, Victoria also recorded all time low record at Mt Hotham of -8 c
Snow resort to open earliest in history
http://www.theage.com.au/national/buller-to-open-for-skiing-after-cold-snap-snowfall-20090429-anh8.html
Melbourne coldest morning since 1957
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbourne-records-coldest-april-morning-since-1957/11797
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbournes-coldest-april-morning-in-half-a-century/11796
Forecast for next 7 days – COLD
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV10450.shtml
Antarctic freezing;”We have experienced quite severe ice conditions over the past decade. I have seen nothing in this region to suggest global warming is having an effect.” http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25347937-11949,00.html
NZ early snow; (dont forget Mt Ruapehu smashed its snow record last year at 5m deep)
http://www.snow.co.nz/media/media_newsletters.asp?newsletterId=7295
Seems like were following the northern hemispheres lead. How cold does it need to get before we say peoples lives are being put in danger?
An important step in the dismantling of the AGW doctrine in Australia.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/aussie-farmers-ask-for-climate-debate.html
The temperatures flanagan referred to were in Melbourne Metro areas on days of high winds when the city was in the path of massive bushfires, the ones that klled over 100 people.
Heat sink + bushfires + a city with record population = record temperature. Anyone suprised?
The Snowy Mountains resorts though are subject to strict population and building limitations to maintain the pristine and fragile Australian alpine environment. The continuity of the temperature record there is more reliable.
It is clear that the current weather in Australia is not climate but the cold without any doubt will help the Cap &Trade Opposition:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/04/truss-put-down-and-bury-rudds-rabid-dog.html
Is the photo on this web site of Charlotte Pass taken on the 29th April 2009?
Reply: According to the wikipedia article from which the photo is linked, it was taken on 2008-07-30 15:24:19. ~ charles the moderator
Nick Yates (16:28:05) : …since 1957. It´s no coincidence. Look above post (11:50:44) :..1956
When PDO was going down as nowadays.
Isn’t weather the instantiation of climate?
I.e Climate is an abstraction, weather is what you actually get.
I think that the term “Climate” has become hopelessly ill-defined, to the point of being worthless.
Actually – could someone please provide a,
[1] Grounded,
[2] Measurable, and
[3] Accessible to human experience.
definition of the Distinction between Climate and Weather.
Climate is what you expect.
Weather is what you get.
Current picture of some of the Thredbo runs (updated every 10 mins). Thredbo is about 7-8km east of Charlotte Pass.
http://ski.com.au/snowcams/australia/nsw/thredbo/thredbo6.html
Well I was there in Melbin, Christmas of 2006 when they had those horrible bush fires and droughts there too. My sis and her families, were installing rain water tanks to try and ease the shortage in case it ever should rain. The drought broke and it rained the day we headed back to Auckland; and the tank arrangements worked just fine.
Those Aussies are a tough bunch of cookies; even though they do exaggerate a lot; a heap in fact; hope you blokes turned out for ANZAC Day there Mates; we ain’t ever going to forget.
George
Man I hate to do this: “”” Climate (from Ancient Greek klima, meaning inclination) is commonly defined as the weather averaged over a long period of time.[2] The standard averaging period is 30 years, “””
Lifted straight out of Wickedpedia.
Of course and not surprisingly considering the source, that is pure BS.
Whathappens tomorrow does not depend on what happens on average; it depends on the sum toital of all of the things that have happened so far.
So a more accurate definition of Climate would be that “Climate is the long term integral of weather”.
And even that isn’t much good because clearly climate (and weather) are local phenomena. Climate varies form region to region, and there is no expectation of it ever averaging out to the same thing everywhere.
George
My web issued snow forecasts for Australia this winter season
are forecasting above average snow falls in the main.
http://www.holtonweather.com/article3.htm
jeez –
Actually, given the WUWT experience, and Gore’s “the debate is over”, I propose a corollary to that saying:
Climate is what you discuss
Snark is what you get
jeez (17:08:14) :
Climate is what you expect.
Weather is what you get.
So Computer Models, model the expected Climate?
That follows, doesn’t it?!
Here’s an assertion. Climate is an intangible illusion. Weather is the real, experiential, tangible reality.
Can anyone prove to me that Climate is NOT and intangible illusion?
if my assertion is correct, then it implies that the Climate Scientists are studying a non-such.
Employ more meterologists.
When one surfs in the GHG ocean, occasionally the snarks bite.
My last web 2009 snow forecasts for Australia are showing, in the main, Above Average snowfalls, especially for the Aust Alps areas.
http://www.holtonweather.com/article3.htm
Good point Graeme Rodaughan. We ae arrogant as a society too. We like to think we have the power to wreck and restore the planet. Probably though, Solar and Geological processes account for nearly everything.
(a) The Australian Continent is roughly the same size as the lower 48.
(b) A great proportion of the continent is above the Tropic of Capricorn.
(c) The highest mountains in Australia are mere hills in the rest of the world.
(d) There are huge amounts of cross ski able areas during the winter months.
(d) The only heat record broken in the February heat wave was three days in a row of a above 110 degrees F.
(e) The same area that experienced this 3 day record had a cold summer. The warmer part of summer only lasted for around 3 weeks.
(f) To Adolfo and Vukcevic. The Australian continent is moving towards the Northeast at a rate of 7cm per year. That’s 7 metres in 100 years. The South Magnetic pole will need to speed up to catch Australia. Australia is North, North east and Northwest of Antarctica. Antarctica rates as a continent and is one and half times larger than the continental US and the Australian continent.
(g) A recent paper established that Australia’s weather patterns were related to the Indian Ocean Dipole effect.
(h) The recent bushfires in the South east of Australia were the worst on record for property loss and loss of life. They were nowhere near the worst for actual land area damage.
George E. Smith (17:41:37) :
Klima greek for Region, district, climate.
Klimax greek for Ladder, staircase
This looks like what we had in Argentina back in 2007. It started with a snowfall in Bariloche on middsumer on February 14th. Then the earliest snowfall ever recorded in Córdoba mountains in the center of the country (1300 meters a.s.l., at 32ºS), and then a sustained freezing weather (mostly below zero temps) until the last days of the winter.
It was when it snowed in Buenos Aires for the first time since 1918. And then we saw severe late frosts on Novemeber 4th, 2007 that killed 50%-100% of crops in Buenos Aires province, and then again 0º C on December 4th, barely two weeks away from summer.
Regarding cycle 23 spot 1016…
In what year was an instrument capable of seeing that spot developed?>
In Houston, we’ve had a 51 degree temperature difference between our warmest temperature of the month of April (88F), and the coldest (37F). Neither were records – on April 7th, the record high is 91F in 1909 and the record low was 32F in 1971. That was a 59F difference for just one day. We did break the all-time rainfall record by about 50%. All in all though my air conditioning bill will be quite low for an April…
I know we are talking about climate as it relates to weather. But climate describes more than the weather. Think about the differences in climate here at WUWT compared to CT for instance. It’s like the difference between night and day. The business climate seems to be following the mistaken idea of climate chaos, and I’m sure that the business climate has been adversely affected by the mishandling of the response to global warming. Every organization or group we belong to has it’s own climate, and that climate is directly related to the leadership and membership of that group.
“In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.”-Gerald Brenan
Mark Twain said that climate is what we expect and weather what we get, but he also said, “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.” , So Twain was a really proactive kind of guy…
Most people appreciate a predictable climate, in fact we create our
our own climate within our houses. Do you like it 70F, 72F or 74F? No problem… we can even set the humidity. I know people that have left Hawaii, a real paradise, because they longed for the seasons and the changes.
John Steinbeck said, “I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.”
So what’s the real difference then? I think that climate can best be described after it’s passed, like anything you see on a journey. Wiki says that it’s about thirty years, I think it’s more like a generation or so. My grandfather and my father enjoyed a climate very different than mine… not better, just different. Neither of them changed the climate around them in any way except by moving, and that is the only way that we or our contemporaries can change climate also.
So how else can we change climate? By changing the ways we interact with each and every person around us.
Thanks to all here for the great climate!
Mike Bryant
“Thanks to all here for the great climate!”
–Mike Bryant
Just fluffy snowflakes riding on waves of warm sunshine sparkles.
Following the record low of -13C yesterday at Charlotte Pass, this morning was an almost balmy -12C.
Since the 25th the temperature has not risen above 1C (night or day) which is about 9 degrees below the April average (9C = 16F absolute)
Prior to this year the lowest April temperature was -11.5C, so the past two mornings have both broken the previous April record for CP and Australia.
This is weather not climate but is very interesting and worthy of note.
Mighty good post, Mike Bryant.
Les Francis (19:04:42) :
…
(g) A recent paper established that Australia’s weather patterns were related to the Indian Ocean Dipole effect.
…
All great points, however (g) is apparently not applicable to the north east of the country, i.e Northern Territory, Queensland and northern New South Wales.
These areas have had floods, etc.. while the SE has been especially dry.
REF: is http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/indian-ocean-drought/
I would suspect that NE Australia has been impacted by the PDO flip from warm to cool, as current NE weather is similar to the 1970s.
Cheers G
No problem – this will be retroactively predicted next week and, of course, found to be completely consistent with the AGW “models”.
Mike Bryant (19:42:27) :
…
So how else can we change climate? By changing the ways we interact with each and every person around us.
Thanks to all here for the great climate!
Mike Bryant
Mike – Thanks, as good an answer as I have seen.
http://www.wgntv.com/news_at_nine
As reported there ” every day the corn does not go into the ground a 2% loss in yield results” It’s not weather it’s climate.
It seems to be at the North Pole, too after having risen gradually from -25 or so up to about -15, it seems to have plummeted back below -20 for the past several days.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology [ BOM ] is forecasting a slightly above normal warm [ southern ] winter temperatures for most of Australia.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/temps_ahead.shtml
Mean while the experimental climate research division of the BOM and the CSIRO, POAMA, are predicting well below normal winter temperatures for all of Australia right through to the mid winter period and into the early spring in another panel.
POAMA Maximum temperature forecast anomalies;
http://poama.bom.gov.au/experimental/poama15/sp_tsfmax.html
POAMA Minimum temperature forecast anomalies
http://poama.bom.gov.au/experimental/poama15/sp_tsfmin.html
Recently the Southern Annular Mode [ SAM ] an ocean oscillation that drives a lot of the weather and climate in the Great Southern Ocean changed phase and has apparently reverted back to a phase situation of a couple of decades ago.
Not a lot is as yet known about the SAM as being so far from the main centres of climate and weather research in the northern hemisphere where all of the research money has been concentrated, nobody has regarded the Great Southern Ocean as particularly important in the world of climate research.
Yet a quick look at any global map will show that the Southern Ocean is the only large Ocean that connects all of the world’s major ocean basins.
It is the only ocean that all the main global ocean currents traverse as they move in their great meanderings around the globe.
The Southern Ocean has only one land mass disruption to the ring of Circumpolar ocean and atmospheric currents that surround the Antarctica continent and that is the narrow Antarctic Peninsula and the southern tip of South America.
The Drake Passage between the tips of the Peninsula and the tip of South America is the only channel through which the Antarctic Circumpolar currents can flow.
After being diverted north by the Antarctic Peninsula, a part of the Southern Ocean Circumpolar currents flow up the west coast of South America and then turn westwards in the equatorial Humbolt current which has a close linkage to the phases of the ENSO.
There is some little evidence that changes in the Antarctic Circumpolar currents may lead to long term changes in the ENSO phases and ultimately to the PDO through this linkage.
The Southern Ocean completely surrounds the Antarctic continent, the fifth largest continent out of the Earth’s seven continents.
The Antarctic continent is about half again as large as the USA [ and Australia ] in area.
To put the Southern Ocean in context with the northern hemishere, the Southern Ocean other than the Antarctic Peninsula and the tip of South America has no land mass intruding south of about 47 degrees, the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.
The equivalent sized ocean in the northern hemisphere would extend down to some 300 kilometres south of the Canadian border, across the very south of France, just north of the Black Sea and across central Asia to a line across central Mongolia.
Changes in the Southern Ocean’s circulation patterns and oscillations such as the SAM are likely to have unresearched and long term impacts on the climate right across the rest of the world through teleconnections that are only just now being researched in their most basic forms.
Just to add, the Southern Ocean is the most important source of krill which is at the food chain base of a great deal of the global ocean’s life.
All this is almost totally ignored in all debates on the future of the Earth’s climate except when it suits some extremist warming propaganda purposes.
Flanagan (05:25:37) : I clearly remember the hot records that were broken in Australia at several locations were not reported here at all, although they were all-time absolute maximum temperatures. Now, a record cold for April is the headline. Weather is not climate, we all agree on this. But where does this tendency to “forget” hot records come from?
Not only that, but this guy:
http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/austin-hits-all-time-record-low-for-month-of-april/
Seems to think that there was an all time low in Austin, yet I don’t remember a peep about it here. Clearly our host is failing to be omniscient and omnipresent. He has clearly failed to be all things to all people. OH the SHAME! /sarcoff>
(Still in ‘watchful waiting’ mode over my tomatoes and the present very unusual very late season cold in N. California… Why oh why hasn’t our host given me a personally customized weather report and planting calendar! … ok, so I didn’t quite manage to get /sarcoff> done in time 😉
Sidebar: Yes, I know, trolls come with snark and are not curable. I don’t expect them to go away. All I ask is that they make it at least a little bit interesting and give use something to work with in the way of debate. Having a foil to practice against, even if a broken one, has some merit. Unfortunately, all too often it’s just empty pedantic sophistry, and that’s no fun for anyone… If I wanted to read RC talking points or have a clue what Soros thinks, well, I know where to find it… So please, AGW trolls, “cowboy up” a little bit, be yourself and not a stereotype cardboard you, and actually participate rather than just tossing BS grenades and running away…
While this is certainly a significant new cold record this early in Australia’s fall going on winter, one must always remember that weather is not climate. – Anthony
Yes BUT!
The climate metric used by the AGW crowd (average of last 30 years weather) is clearly broken, so it isn’t really “climate” either! We know that there are 17x year solar cycles that track with some weather patterns. We know that there are 1500 year Bond Events. We know that the idea that the 30 year average of weather has some meaning as “climate” is broken.
So, can’t we find some half way house on this? How about using 400 years of baseline and calling 30 year weather what it is: weather.
Prediction: Long cold winters and dropping agriculture production, forcing up food prices and starving the worlds poor will – unfortunately – be a poster child for breaking the AGW Meme.
US food production looks like it’s going to take a hit from the cold.
When people who are already taking it tough from the GFC, find that food has gone up in price, expect them to start asking questions, and demanding answers.
Ray (13:18:05) “. . . climate is the average of weather.”
NO! NO! NO! Consider a place that has a hot summer and a cold winter. Its average temperature is useless for describing the kind of place it is. Another place might have the same average with a very small variation.
Would the two places have the same climate? NO!
Time sequenced patterns of the variables of temperature, precipitation, humidity, and so on can be used to classify climate types. One place might have a wet winter season and a dry summer. Another can have a dry winter and a wet summer. There are many patterns of seasonal differences. Try this for a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
simon from South Australia (16:26:22) : firewood
I just came in a few hours ago from loading a pickup with what I call trash wood – cottonwood, aspen, mostly, and a few others – willow and hawthorn. A friend needs a supply as May arrives.
Here in central Washington State wood is sold by the cord (4x4x8 feet) rather than by weight.
I thought places in Australia did not allow you to cut trees! What’s up with you?
George E. Smith (17:41:37) : The standard averaging period is 30 years,
As established by international agreement. 30 year averaging period ends in a year with “0”, as in 1990, 2000, 2010.
Les Francis (19:04:42) : A great proportion of the continent is above the Tropic of Capricorn.
Not to let a good snark opportunity pass without a snark-attack:
Does that goodly portion of the continent float up there or is it supported from above or below?
Climate change = wild fluctuations in temperatures, rainfall, hours of sunshine and yes snowfall. GW is, as most of you will know, the incorrect term to use and is misleading. Of course if you want to mislead in your discussions you’ll continue to use the term global warming.
Weather is a function of climate.
Good question. Since the continent of Australia is floating upwards towards the Tropic of Capricorn at the rate of 7cm a year
I posted on another thread, lowest April morning temperature since 1957 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2.7c. That’s Melbourne CBD, other suburbs recorded *ZERO*.
NH had record lows during it’s winter. Looks like here in Australia, this winter will be cold too. All under a “quiet” Sun.
“Not to let a good snark opportunity pass without a snark-attack:
Does that goodly portion of the continent float up there or is it supported from above or below?”
You can come and see for yourself if you like, but after those comments you should cover your face before you look skywards. There may be more than just the odd Gull or Pigeon to worry about.
As a resident of said continent, I agree that it does seem to be the closest place to heaven.
Anthony – first time poster here. I don’t really agree with your put down of Flanagan. The whole point of the argument against climate change is that it is bad science. I am a veterinary surgeon and it is drilled into us that we must practice evidence- based medicine. The evidence for climate change is of much poorer quality than the evidence required to launch a new drug for animals. However, even when posters are infuriating, we must be open to what they say as their evidence should be fairly evaluated and then disregarded or accepted. Clearly they must supply the proof of their evidence to be taken seriously. For me, the key is that climate change does not allow dissent and the sceptics must prove they are above such behaviour.
have to say – love the blog!
More cold weather stories from downunder…….
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/skiers-welcome-cold-snap/11803
It’s interesting that Mt Buller ski resort has never opened up this early in it’s 45 year history ?
As a keen skiier I’m glad we have global warming to make things colder 🙂
Also, Melbourne had it’s coldest April morning in 50 years.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-records-coldest-april-morning-for-56-years-20090430-anoz.html
————-
Flanagan (05:25:37) : I clearly remember the hot records that were broken in Australia at several locations were not reported here at all, although they were all-time absolute maximum temperatures. Now, a record cold for April is the headline. Weather is not climate, we all agree on this. But where does this tendency to “forget” hot records come from?
– Mr Flanagan, you forget that the reporting of weather events showing only record hot temperatures is well and truely covered by the media. Anthony only tries to help balance the equation here.
Slightly OT but the UK Met Office have just issued their forecast for the summer over here.
The coming summer is ‘odds on for a barbecue summer’, according to long-range forecasts. Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer.
Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office, Ewen McCallum, said: “After two disappointingly-wet summers, the signs are much more promising this year. We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30 °C, something we hardly saw at all last year.”
Although the forecast is for a drier and warmer summer than average that does not mean that we will not get some heavy downpours at times. However, a repeat of the wet summers of 2007 and 2008 is unlikely.
The question really is, in light of their track record, should I be stocking up on firewood or sunblock?
matt (23:08:55) :
“Climate change = wild fluctuations in temperatures, rainfall, hours of sunshine and yes snowfall.”
Really? Is that all? I never knew!!
Sorry – but people post strange things around here sometimes…
Nickm (01:30:08) :
Welcome to the blog. Your assessment of Flanagan’s acceptance here is quite reasonable, however, as more evidence accumulates you’ll see he repeatedly makes the same claim despite evidnece to the contrary. His whining about not discussing record heat in Australia is about the most egerious claim. If WUWT were the dual of RealClimate, Flanagan would have been banned a long time ago. However, Anthony is much more tolerant and there’s likely near unaminous agreement that the few people he’s banned were here to disrupt instead of debate.
Personally, I think Flanagan has pretty much worn out his welcome, but his noise level is low enough so I occasionally reply as I did above to let new readers realize his arguments are largely false.
Matt:- Of course if you want to mislead in your discussions you’ll continue to use the term global warming.
Well you lot started it!!!
(Sorry, childish I know, but REALLY…….)
matt (23:08:55) :
Climate change = wild fluctuations in temperatures, rainfall, hours of sunshine and yes snowfall. GW is, as most of you will know, the incorrect term to use and is misleading. Of course if you want to mislead in your discussions you’ll continue to use the term global warming.
OK. If GW is incorrect and misleading, ask the MSM, Al Gore, Hansen, Man, Gavin, et. al. to stop using it.
I was taught, long ago, that “climate” is the prevailing pattern of weather in a geographically distinct area. As discussed above, the pattern is determined over a standardized 30 years. Also as discussed above, that fails to take into account longer term trends. Thus you also need to address data deniers, who claim there was no Little Ice Age, Medieval Warming Period, etc. (As glaciers recede and uncover the remains of villages, deniers of the evidence for NCC, such as Mann, Gavin, Gore, etc., remind me of Creationists denying dinosaur fossils as evidence of Evolution. Is that really the “scientific” company that you, and they, want to keep?)
But have it your way. Now you need to explain the difference between Natural Climate Variation (NCV) and Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC? – which, I presume, replaces Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)).
Please explain, quantitatively, the distinction between “wild fluctuations” and normal/natural “fluctuations” (although I believe the more accurate term would be “variation”). And present your theory of ACC in the form of some falsifiable hypotheses. If that’s the “new” theory, let’s address it in terms of mainstream, not “ACC,” science.
ROM
SO commentary of surpassing excellence. Much obliged.
” John F. Hultquist (21:39:10) : I just came in a few hours ago from loading a pickup with what I call trash wood ”
My grandpa called it “gopher wood” –you put some on the fire and ‘go fer’ some more because it burns so fast. Iron Wood trees were great,–heavy wood, burned slow and hot, the coals looked great. You could sit and watch them a long time. It could be 40 below outside but toasty in the house!
Burning wood, weeding the garden, eating eggs and butter, fresh foods from garden in fall, following the farmers almanac, … the good old days!
Graeme Rodaughan (16:59:51) : Isn’t weather the instantiation of climate?
Weather is what’s happening now with temperature, wind, precipitation, etc.
Climate is what’s happened over a very long history of a place in terms of the same properties.
The problem is: What is “a very long history”. The ’30 year average’ metric is clearly broken. There is at least one demonstrated weather cycle that runs about that long or longer (PDO, AMO, etc.) and there are solar cycles of much longer duration that seem to have a weather changing impact (there is a correlation of some degree.) On the longer end, there are 1470 year cycles of extreme cold:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/
Now if a change comes around on a regular basis, rather like the seasons, but is longer cycle that we normally notice in our short little lives, was there really a change of ‘climate’? Is not the Mediterranean Climate still present in the Mediterranean even though we had the LIA, MWP, Roman Optimum, etc.?
So some of us, like me for instance, tend to endorse Pamela’s point of view:
Your climate changes when you change your altitude, distance from the ocean, latitude, etc. i.e. Climate only changes over geologic time scales. Now I doubt that someone from 1800 And Froze To Death would really think that the climate was the same then as it is now (basically a practical climate based on what you can plant, grow, etc.) but I would assert that it is the same. Why? Because right now a volcano could pop off in Indonesia and we could have 2010 And Froze To Death. NOTHING has really changed, so how can I say the climate has changed? We would just be having a spectacular weather even for a few years.
So, IMHO, your question comes down to: “What is your time scale?”
short: weather —– middle: unclear —– very long: climate
we can clearly say that short starts at “now”. It’s the long end that is cloudy… But in my opinion, the notion of climate change in less than thousands of years is broken. In particular, is not the Sahara a desert climate and staying that way for many centuries and is not Antactica an arctic climate and staying that way for many centuries and Chile, California, Australia and the Mediterranean area all Mediterranean climate; and Northern Siberia a tundra climate; and Western Canada a temperate forrest climate; and the Amazon a Tropical Climate?
So my practical, grounded, measurable, and accessible to human experience definition of climate would be that it is reflected in the gross ecology that lives or can live in a place and that if the gross ecology has not changed, the climate has not changed (though the other direction is not true if people have eradicated the local ecology; for example via farming or a dam.) Why this definition? Because plants and animals have had millions of years to adapt to the normal ranges of an area. Cactus in the Mojave, for example, can survive both hot and cold, wet and dry. On rare occasions, the Mojave can be cold and wet… that is not an ‘unusual event’ on a geologic, climate, or biological time scale; even if it is on a human time scale.
Sidebar on Sahara: There is an interesting oscillation in the Sahara. On a geologic time scale it swaps from wet and lush to dry and dead. I don’t have a good answer to the question of “Is that climate change”. Clearly it is changing the ecology there. I would tend toward calling it “climate change”; yet it is a quasi periodic event, so isn’t it “normal’? (and thus not “change”?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_pump_theory
So by my ecological based metric, I would have to call the Sahara a climate oscillator. It is not a stable single state, and the life there has not adapted to the full range of it’s states. Yet I can make the case that since those states last for tens of thousands of years, maybe that is a geologic time scale.
So my practical cutoff for the upper bound would be 10,000 years. At the 20k to 30k year range we have the Sahara oscillator to deal with. At less than 3,000 we have Bond Events. I think this pretty much bounds the range at about 5,000 to 20,000 years and so 10,000 looks to me like a reasonable point to plant the flag.
I think that the term “Climate” has become hopelessly ill-defined, to the point of being worthless.
I would agree, but think that the effort to reach a decent redefinition is worthy…
Graeme Rodaughan (17:06:33) :
Actually – could someone please provide a,
[1] Grounded,
[2] Measurable, and
[3] Accessible to human experience.
definition of the Distinction between Climate and Weather.
Hopefully I’ve done that…
matt (23:08:55) : Climate change = wild fluctuations in temperatures, rainfall, hours of sunshine and yes snowfall.
You mean like what’s normal in Texas?
Once had a 50 F or so plunge of temps from about 75 F to about 25 F and from sunny to snow in roughly 18 hours. I think I was in Dallas at the time (some convention 3 decades ago). Startling to a guy from California where San Diego is 70 F +/- 5 F more or less year round…
So Texas has Climate Change and California has weather (because nothing changes)? Strange definition…
GW is, as most of you will know, the incorrect term to use and is misleading.
Yes, we know it is. We keep hoping that the AGW advocates will learn that AGW is bunk and that it’s just the normal range of nature on the planet, but some folks are slow to catch on that people have little or nothing to do with the climate and that it isn’t warming and any changes are certainly not global. But we press on with presenting the data that shows that AGW is a broken concept.
Of course if you want to mislead in your discussions you’ll continue to use the term global warming.
Well, unfortunately, since the AGW crowd has made it the agenda, we kind of don’t really have any choice but to talk about their agenda with their term for it… It would be rather lumpy and very unclear to say:
“Hansen and Gore in advocating that the world is getting warm…er changing it’s changeable weath…er having variations of things that vary… Oh forget it…”
So, as long as the weather models are predicting that it is going to get warmer, and as long as the scare mongers are scaring with warmer fears of melting ice caps and sea level rise and tropical mosquito fears and as long as CO2 is accused of causing warming…. As long as that’s the agenda, the best and most clear way to refer to that agenda is to call it “Global Warming” and in particular “AGW” as a political movement based on the Global Warming Climate Change thesis.
Unless of course you want to say that the Climate Change we can expect is that we will all end up with a nice paradise climate, in which case I’m all for dropping the global warming term and calling it Paradise Change… 😉
Meanwhile, California’s Sierra Mountains are bracing for another snow storm this weekend…snow above 7000 foot level from Friday May 1st through Saturday morning, as far south as Fresno. This is to provide symmetry with last year on May 1 when we had an unpredicted cold snap that blasted through the orange groves, causing much damage.
But I guess two years in a row does not count, of course. Increased snow in California is just what was predicted by the Climate Change Crowd. Maybe after 10 or 20 years in a row?
What’s that? California is to have a hotter and drier climate, with less precipitation? We know this is true because the climate models tell us it is true.
Just ignore the white stuff on the ground, then. It will soon disappear, and you can tell yourself you imagined it.
Can I turn of my heater, too, and pretend it really is getting warmer?
And in case anyone didn’t see this …. an article about mice infesting an elderly folks home in Queensland ….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8026865.stm
What caught my eye was the quote at the end :
“The state health department blamed the infestation on the cooler autumn climate which was forcing mice across the region to look for warm places to infiltrate.”
Not sure Gore does know what he’s talking about. I don’t listen to him.
Of course the debate is about whether or not current fluctuations are significant or not and if so, whether they are anthropogenic or just part of natural cycles. Probably a bit of both which is why we could debate the whys & wherefores forever.
The biggest problem we have is human population numbers increasing to a level where competition for resources among humans & between humans and other species is getting more and more intense. Wiping out fish stocks, large areas of the Amazon and polluting the little fresh water supplies we have really isn’t intelligent.
Just look around you. How can anybody possibly claim that we humans are not having an impact on this planet? And as for those making such a claim as being ‘arrogant’- what are you talking about?! Concerned? Yes.
You can argue the anthropogenic vs natural causes of climate change all day. The simple fact is that the climate is changing- the people who even deny that truly are are set of ostriches. The amount of unnatural substances we are putting into the air, the ground and the water is quite obviously significant.
A good balanced argument requires two sides, but I struggle to take these people who deny a human influence on our planets delicately balanced systems seriously. Some of them talk as if they are respected scientists dedicating their lives to climate research, rather than people enjoying all the benefits of milking the earth for all it’s worth with no thought for the future, as we are all doing. But of course, the IPCC and all those scientists world wide are clearly part of a huge cloak and dagger conspiracy theory- in the hope of gaining what exactly?
This is the first time I’ve ever put a comment on a debate page like this, the reason I have is because the sheer [snip] of so many who do makes me extremely angry and pushes me towards despair. Let’s just hope that there are enough people out there to help us positively change the way we exist on this planet, and that the majority of the [snip] spend their time on pages such as this one, out of harms way. And yes we do all realise that the earth’s climate fluctuates naturally over the years, but to palm off all the harm we’re doing to the only planet we know of with life on it, and just blithely say that the earth will go on anyway is a cop out of criminal proportions. Wake up.
Reply: Welcome to WUWT. Be respectful of other posters or post elsewhere. First warning. ~ charles the moderator
Well said Will.
Well, we can thru pollution, deforestation and so on make the planet uninhabitable for us, but to seriously believe that we can kill or save the planet is arrogant. And shows a human not geological timescale. There is not a global system as the true believers describe, just as true believers are wrong about creationism too. The Earth has many regional systems, it can get warmer some places and colder others. It may be generally warming now as it has been for 12k years but that is a good thing. Lets leave the hysteria behind. We must be resilient, that is always the key to survival. Fluid dynamic computer models of the Earth are nothing to make plans around or lament. There are profound biological, geological, and solar processes ongoing that no one understands. CO2 increases may be only correlated, and you may be ignoring another variable. The flora will love it. I am so tired of the group think tendency towards hysteria and dogmatism. Be resilient!
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/archive/200904.summary.shtml