FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOAA: April Temperatures Slightly Cooler Than Average for U.S.
May 8, 2009
The April 2009 temperature for the contiguous United States was below the long-term average, based on records going back to 1895, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC.
The average April temperature of 51.2 degrees F was 0.8 degree F below the 20th Century average. Precipitation across the contiguous United States in April averaged 2.62 inches, which is 0.19 inch above the 1901-2000 average.
U.S. Temperature Highlights
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)
- April temperatures were near normal across much of the United States. On a regional scale, only the Northeast (above-normal) and the West North Central (below-normal) deviated significantly from normal.
- New Hampshire observed its eighth warmest April, based on data going back to 1895. Unlike much of the Northeast, the Midwest experienced a cooler-than-normal month. From North Dakota southward to Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia, temperature averages were below normal.
- For the year-to-date period, only North Dakota and Washington have experienced notably cooler-than-normal average temperatures. In contrast, much of the South and Southwest regions were above normal. New Mexico had its ninth warmest such period on record.
- Based on NOAA’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index, the contiguous U.S. temperature-related energy demand was 2.3 percent below average in April.
U.S. Precipitation Highlights
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)
- Above-normal precipitation fell across parts of the Central and South regions, while the West and Northwest regions experienced below-normal precipitation.
- Precipitation was above normal for the contiguous United States. Georgia had its fifth wettest April on record, Kansas and Michigan had their ninth wettest, and Illinois, its tenth. Only seven states were notably drier than normal for April.
- Year to date, the Northeast experienced its fourth driest January-through-April period on record and it was the twelfth driest period for the contiguous U.S.
- By the end of April, moderate-to-exceptional drought covered 18 percent of the contiguous United States, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. Severe, or extreme, drought conditions continued in parts of California, Florida, Hawai’i, Nevada, Wisconsin, the southern Appalachians, and the southern Plains, with exceptional drought in southern Texas.
About 21 percent of the contiguous United States had moderately-to-extremely wet conditions at the end of April, according to the Palmer Index (a well-known index that measures both drought intensity and wet spell intensity).
Other Highlights
- International Falls, Minn., recorded 125 inches of snow so far this winter season, breaking the previous record of 116 inches set in the 1995-1996 winter season. Another seasonal snowfall record was broken in Spokane, Wash., where 97.7 inches of snowfall broke the old record of 93.5 inches set in 1915-1916.
- About eight percent of the contiguous U.S. was covered by snow at end of April, according to an analysis by the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. Snow coverage during the month peaked at 30.2 percent on April 6, after a late-season winter storm hit the Midwest and Plains.
- The 263 preliminary tornadoes reported in April was above the three-year average of 200 confirmed tornadoes.
NCDC’s preliminary reports, which assess the current state of the climate, are released soon after the end of each month. These analyses are based on preliminary data, which are subject to revision. Additional quality control is applied to the data when late reports are received several weeks after the end of the month and as increased scientific methods improve NCDC’s processing algorithms.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
Here is a chart of all April’s since 1895 from the NOAA/NCDC.
Pretty cold this April compared to average (but others were lower).
No global warming signal in US April temps (and the trend in this chart has been adjusted upward by about 0.8F from the raw data rather than adjusted lower to account for the poor siting problems identified by Anthony).
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/graphics/divstaticgraph?stationname=National%20Summary&stationid=11000&element=TMP&startdate=189504&enddate=200904&filter=04
Leif Svalgaard (12:51:51) :
“Was that the place that was supposed to be super-sensitive to solar cycle length and experience a step decrease? Achibald was holding forth on that.”
Dear oh dear, Dr Svalgaard. Aren’t we getting a trifle obsessive? Why not try waking up each day with joy and wonder instead? We now know what your fear most. It is Friss-Christianson and Lassen theory.
When will ‘weather’ favor global warming?
If you plot out “All Months” 1895-2009…There’s not much of a trend at all…
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/cdodivisionalselect.cmd?nationSelect=110&startMonthSelect=01&startYearSelect=1895&endMonthSelect=01&endYearSelect=2009&outputRadio=staticGraph&staticGraphElementSelect=TMP&filterSelect=00&method=doStaticGraphOutput&reqtype=nation
Warming or cooling!
The lack of an apparent trend is probably due to plotting average temperatures with a y-axis from 20F to 80F instead of temperature anomalies with a y-axis from -1C to +1C.
IF you want to prove that the Earth is warming, use an ‘average’ period that include figures that are generally higher than ‘normal’ (eg, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology use an 11 year moving average for Oz temps which conveniently includes peak temps like 1998).
Alternatively, to prove that the Earth is NOT cooling and that present temps are only ‘average’ and nothing for the anti-warmists to crow about, include a longer time frame that has many more cooler temps so that the ‘average’ is closer to the current spate of cold ‘weather’ events.
“New Hampshire observed its eighth warmest April, based on data going back to 1895.”
Not according to:
http://met-www.cit.cornell.edu/climate/Summary_2009-04.html
The warmest April was 1941 at 47.7, April 2009 was 45.5.
Uh, Captain Ken, that’s exactly what it shows. A rank of 108 is 8th warmest.
E.M.Smith (13:02:02) :
The charts do a wonderful job of showing why the averaging process is flawed. ALL of California is shown as normal temp and partial drought.
Well, the data is there to do a more refined presentation, if they wanted to:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/usclimdivs/climdiv.pl?variab=Temperature&type=1&base=3&mon1=4&mon2=4&iy%5B1%5D=2009&iy%5B2%5D=&iy%5B3%5D=&iy%5B4%5D=&iy%5B5%5D=&iy%5B6%5D=&iy%5B7%5D=&iy%5B8%5D=&iy%5B9%5D=&iy%5B10%5D=&iy%5B11%5D=&iy%5B12%5D=&iy%5B13%5D=&iy%5B14%5D=&iy%5B15%5D=&iy%5B16%5D=&iy%5B17%5D=&iy%5B18%5D=&iy%5B19%5D=&iy%5B20%5D=&irange1=&irange2=&xlow=&xhi=&xint=&scale=&iwhite=1&Submit=Create+Plot
Does this look more like April for California in your experience?
Only slightly OT:
Watts Wins! Watts Wins! Watts Wins Again! -OR-
Google Traffic Indicates Death of AGW Hoax
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/05/one-graph-to-illustrate-death-of-global.html
Pearland Aggie (13:33:00) :
Thanks for the link to that site re the computer model diss of the galactic ray/cloud formation work. Perfect ending for an email I just sent.
“In other words, April was a boringly average month. How do they expect to stoke the flames of crisis with that?”
The warmers want it covered no matter what happens. If the planet gets warmer its out fault. If it gets colder that’s our fault too. And if it stays the same that’s also our fault.
David Archibald (14:39:43) :
We now know what your fear most. It is Friss-Christianson and Lassen theory.
No need to fear that one. It has been debunked thoroughly, including by one that matters most to me: myself.
I’m curious — did you put in the summaries or did they come from the NOAA?
I ask because the “Midwest” is defined as Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, yet the summary states that the Midwest states “from North Dakota southward” experienced cooler temperatures. Those are “Great Plains” states, not “the Midwest.”
Just sayin; 😉
Andy Greene (14:10:15) :
“I think the title says it all. Fox news will be crowing about April weather disproving global warming, but the fact remains that climate has become more up and down, and warmer on average, over the past 50 years (or more).”
Could you provide a reference?
Every time I see a statement like yours it usually turns out to be false. Let’s see if you can back your statement up with facts.
Also, it’s been warming for over 200 years since the trough of the LIA and it is warmer now. It also cooled for a couple hundred years from the peak of the MWP until the depths of the LIA. It should be warmer in the last 50 years than it has been for centuries given this natural climate variation.
David Archibald (14:39:43) :
We now know what your fear most. It is Friss-Christianson and Lassen theory.
No need to fear that one. It has been debunked thoroughly, including by one that matters most to me: myself.
What I do fear is government policy set by pseudo-scientific nonsense of either stripe.
Jim Watson (13:42:38) :
“Since we’ve really only had truly accurate temperature monitoring for 30 years”
We have? The surfacestations project might not confirm this …
Richard M (15:38:51) :
Every time I see a statement like yours it usually turns out to be false. Let’s see if you can back your statement up with facts.
People like Andy Greene making statements like the one he made probably don’t even watch Fox News. If they did, they’d realize Fox picks up all the regular “OHNOOOES!!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!” claptrap the rest of the media is so in love with.
Mark
So I heard today, that Obama’s marketing people are telling him since he lost the argument about global warming, he needs to redefine the terms of his “tax and ration” energy plan.
They tried to re-brand it all as climate change when it started getting cold, but that didn’t help. No word on what the new new branding name will be for the same old crap.
They need the taxes from the CO2 hoax to pay for the overruns from the socialized medicine debacle.
I still think my line best describes what is going on — Pay more in taxes to the government, so government scientists can pretend to control the weather. Each day it seems, Steve McIntyre exposes more of the pretend science part.
Leif Svalgaard (14:13:30) :
TomS (13:44:31) :
It’s never mentioned that since 1950 we been living with the Sun’s Modern Maximum sunspot cycles.
These cycles were not significantly larger than several cycles in the 19th and 18th centuries, but temperature were…
http://i43.tinypic.com/f9ph6v.jpg
“Murray Carpenter (12:51:22) :
Has anyone else noticed that the Cryosphere Today N/H ice extent graph/trace hasn’t moved for about a week now?”
They seem to have lost their energy a bit: They still carry the “Statement related to Daily Tech …” and talk about “This year’s sea ice retreat (2007)”.
But it is understandable. The loss of their statellite and the recovery of the NH-sea-ice must have been a double whammy.
Record warm heat through lots or Europe last month and in other places second hottest to the unbelievably warm April 2007 – http://www.knmi.nl/kenniscentrum/alweer_warme_april/ . Two hottest Aprils in a century in three years is not weather – but climate.
Also hotter than average across Australia, China, much of Russia, India, all of southern South America, southern Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, most of the north Atlantic and the south Atlantic…
Anyone want to guess the global surface temperature for the month of April?
REPLY: There’s no need to “guess” the global surface temperature, we have it right here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/07/april-global-temperature-anomalies-rss-steady-uah-dropped-50/
At 0.091°C, it is about as warm as this time in 1980 (0.145) a bit cooler actually and about 0.08 warmer than April 2008.
Data source: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
GISS doesn’t count, it is terribly polluted with UHI, and pointless adjustments. So no need to cite it here. Cheers. – Anthony
Having read most of the relative posts, i come down on David Archibalds side. The rational, HUMBLE, approach lends great credibility. I absolutely believe we do not ” know”, half of what we think we know. fm
Would really love to see these archives brought current…
http://climate.uah.edu/
>There’s no need to “guess” the global surface temperature, we have it right here:
Nope you don’t. That is a complex function of temperature at a range of levels in the atmosphere lying far above the surface. It is patched together from near 15 satellites with merges which are significantly contested. It also contains fictional data for the Antarctic, Andes and Himalayas.
I’m perplexed about your reference to GISS. This is just one of 4 widely available surface temperature sets all of which show similar things. Are you suggesting they are all wrong? and if so why are you reporting surface temperatures at all?
REPLY: And I’m terribly perplexed by you, why are you changing your user name here? “anon” ?
Here is what Dr. Roy Spencer has to say about your alarmist concerns spoken from the comfort of anonymity.
DJ I’m not impressed by your claims. If you want to throw out the satellite data fine, throw it all out. Your opinion is of no consequence. – Anthony Watts
TomS (13:44:31) :
It’s never mentioned that since 1950 we been living with the Sun’s Modern Maximum sunspot cycles.
Leif Svalgaard (14:13:30)
These cycles were not significantly larger than several cycles in the 19th and 18th centuries, but temperature were…
Given the faulty siting and shoddy collection of temperature data for at least the second half of the twentieth century (Anthony’s surface station report), perhaps the temperatures are not quite so strikingly warm after all. I am ready for a whole new look — a revisionist look — at what we have had to believe up to this point.
And perhaps the “coldists” on this blog might also ease up a bit. Temperature cycling is normal, even if we do not know how it happens. We need a lot more information about the sun and its immediate and overall (within the dynamic/chaotic climate system) effects on the Earth. Leif seems to be helping us rethink some almost religious beliefs. I am very happy to be wrong, but at least we should have the freedom to rethink.
Looking through wxmaps it doesn’t look like May is really hot worldwide according to predictions
hotter in the southwestern US
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
but colder than normal in northern canada
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
———————————
H.O.T in parts of the middle east and warmer than normal in parts of Russia
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp9.html
But a bit colder than normal in the Himalayas and part of East Africa (map above)
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp11.html
————————
Tropical Africa is also cooler than normal in the forecast
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp10.html
Up and down, yes, plenty of things for both sides to cherrypick from these maps.