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.
>And if you look at the Australian temperature anomalies for the last year, everywhere is near average to cooler than average except the WA desert interior, which indicates data problems from the single station (Warburton).
No need to check the map when you can get the actual numbers (http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmean&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=0) which show an anomaly of +0.35C.
That a record 7 year in a row for which May->April has been warmer than average.
And here are the maps…
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=maxanom&period=12month&area=nat
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=minanom&period=12month&area=nat
which do not support your claim.
REPLY: Nice try “DJ”. Can you prove that the temperatures have not been:
1) influenced by UHI
2) influenced by siting
3) numerically adjusted in such a way that adds positive bias to the record
The surface temperature record in the USA and much of ROW is corrupted by all of these problems and the problems exist in GISS, NOAA, GHCN, and HadCRUT…which is why the surface temperature record is diverging from the satellite record.
Cheers – Anthony Watts
Miskolczi`s New Greenhouse Law
‘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. ‘
Dept. of Energy does the energy bean counting.
Does NOAA duplicate effort here?
NC Tejas (Texas) near normal? I think not. And I can’t believe how little sun we have had this year either! Especially on weekends when I have off; doing laundry and drying clothes in the sun has not worked out this year.
[snip – one more word about chemtrails and you are permanently banned from this forum – Anthony]
Basil (19:34:33) :
Maybe we should be wondering why the mid-19th century wasn’t warmer?
Maybe we should re-examine the rationale for that it should have been warmer…
The NOAA article keeps using the word “normal”: “near normal”; “above-normal”; “below-normal” etc. Shouldn’t they be using the word “average”? Or is it a subtle attempt to imply anything not “normal” is bad? And what do they mean by “notably cooler-than-normal average temperatures”?
DJ, your constant harping on temperature (actually anyone’s harping on temperature data stand alones) demonstrates a lack of knowledge as to why this area or that area was hot or cold. Simply stating the temperature does not prove anything. Examine the circumstances. Just like the circumstances surrounding the steep Arctic melt in late summer. That melt was due to unusual ice outflow (current and wind) to warmer more southern latitude waters where it melted as expected, not from sudden warming, or global warming, in the Arctic circle itself. You reveal your lack of understanding regarding weather pattern variations and weather drivers, as does anyone who uses temperature alone to “prove” the side of the fence they stand on.
Based on the real NOAA maps, about 2/3 of the country was below normal and nearly half of New Mexico was below normal. The article’s analysis is suspect – at best.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Last1mTDeptUS.png
Here in eastern Washington state, we are under a late freeze warning. Even our local global warming zealots have stopped writing letters to newspapers claiming that we in danger from warming. They have shifted to claiming that cap and trade will lead to less energy use which will somehow save the planet. They are very vague about the specifics.
DJ is there a budget allocation at BOM for time spent in “denier smackdown” across the ocean?
One wonders if the taxpayers of Australia approve of such job activities. Aren’t there problems in Australia that need solving? Cheers- Anthony Watts
Steven, I see in the colors of your map, the trail left behind by deep jet stream loops digging into the western and mid section of the North American continent before the loop rises back up to its northern confines by the time it reaches the Great Lakes.
There is a link between CO2 and temperature!
Global Warming is causing CO2, but we new that already.
Nice piece from Dr. Roy Spencer
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/
Anthony I refer you to your policy – http://wattsupwiththat.com/policy/ .
Perhaps you have forgotten this part…
Trolls, flame-bait, personal attacks, and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted, take that personally if you wish, but all deletions are final. Grousing about it won’t help since deleted posts can’t be recovered. Rather than trying to edit, bulk moderation may be employed to save time.
Perhaps you might delete your previous comment. You have also flouted the implied anonymity on your comments page.
Reply: By pointing out that you might be from Australia? I think you are reaching here DJ ~ charles the moderator
DJ, do you live in Australia? If not, please refrain from quoting temperatures in this vast island. It’s a lot cooler this year than last. It’s been cooler all summer. Ski seasons in both New Zealand and Australia have started 6-8 weeks earlier than last winter. We’ve the best snow falls in 57 years here in Australia.
David Segesta (15:19:51) :
“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.
It needs to be “Our Fault”. The implication is that with such great responsibility – goes great power.
I speculate that the underlying psychological motive for AGW Belief is a fear that humans are insignificant and powerless in the face of the forces of nature. The Belief in AGW, posits the opposite which provides a convenient, masking, security blanket for the AGW Warmist Soul.
Inappropriate Guilt is (too my mind) motivated by the same dynamic, i.e. it is better to be guilty, than to be powerless. To experience guilt is less threatening than to experience powerlessness.
I’d be surprised if the temperature data ever was able to convince closed minded people of anything. (Note: as a point of psychology, everyone is closed minded unless they are undecided. That’s just human nature.) The surface data is hilariously bad, yet some folks cling to it tenaciously. The satellite data is at least not scandalously bad, but AGW believers have sufficient excuses to ignore it.
This is why the sea ice data is the true canary in the coal mine. The data is not in dispute and it is a fair measure of global temperature. Now the sea ice’s response to global conditions is slow (dare I say “glacial”) and thus it’s a lagging indicator.
On top of all that, Gore made a clear prediction about sea ice. AT LAST, a falsifiable statement!
Oops.
Pat (20:23:16) :
I met someone who was visiting from Australia. He told me of the winds incessantly blowing (Melbourne) same as we have here. What part of Australia do you live in and do you have these incessant winds?
Dr. Spencer, you have discovered KISS. The models don’t need pages and pages of code. Always consider the simple connection first. If you can’t rule it out, don’t make it more complicated than that, until such a time as you can falsify the simple reason. Don’t talk about the Sun or CO2 till you can rule out the simple weather pattern variation from natural drivers easily demonstrated out your back door.
I live in North Central Arkansas. I can attest to the cooler than normal temps. It’s also much cloudier and it rains almost every day the past 2 weeks. We went a full week with zero sunshine earlier this May. It’s currently 58 with an expected low of 53. Trust me. This is not what we were getting back in the 90’s. But we did have a cool Spring last year, too. I hope we have another mild Summer, but my wife’s praying for some sunshine. Her garden could use it.
tarpon (16:00:46) :
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.
Apparently they are thinking of trying “Clean Green Jobs” – but I don’t have the reference link handy…
Am I the only one here who suspects that if two brilliant ego-centrics quit sniping at each other and decided to collaborate on just one, miniscule area where they could both admit to uncertainty that climate science would be irrevocably changed and a cure for cancer might result as well? I’d be willing to offer my place on the Southern New England shore as a neutral parley ground. I can both cook and have the very rare ability to translate ‘stroyn into English.
If you plot out “All Months” 1895-2009…There’s not much of a trend at all… Well, when you look at that graph, that’s certainly not very alarming.
Basil
I’m in a bit of a hurry so this might be a little incoherent. I have often felt uncomfortable with Leif’s insistence that the sun was as active in the 18th and 19th century as the 20th. Now, I seem to remember that the area under a curve (AUC) for a graph can give an indication of a quantity of what the graph is representing. Assuming that a graph of SSN (or TSI) is a “proxy” for the suns activity I have used this for estimating the percentage difference in activity for the 18, 19 and 20 century. I have used a smoothed representation of the of Leif’s latest (I hope) TSI data. This estimation gives the 19th century being ~12% more active than the 18th and the 20th being 21 % more active than the 19th.
Here is my graph (I hope). I’m new at posting graphs! Use ImageJ to get the areas.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37061901@N05/3524588928/
“rbateman (20:32:37) :
Pat (20:23:16) :
I met someone who was visiting from Australia. He told me of the winds incessantly blowing (Melbourne) same as we have here. What part of Australia do you live in and do you have these incessant winds?”
I live in Sydney, western suburbs sufficiently enough west to be colder in winter and hotter in summer than central Sydney itself. We’ve had some wind here, but in all reality, it’s not that bad. I’ve lived in Wellington, NZ, so I know all about wind lol.
I was in Melbourne recently, the weather was great, sunny and clear, albeit cold. The first day I was there, getting out of the car after parking, it was THAT cold I actually popped into a second-hand clothing store across the road and purchased a Kathmandu fleece jacket for AU$10. In one of the pockets was a shopping list, and another was a 200 Koruna note (AU$15 – winner LOL!).
Melbourne recently had recorded it’s coldest May morning in 30 years or so. Melbourne is typically colder than Sydney and is the inspiration for the song “Four Seasons in One Day”.