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.
David Archibald (23:59:55) notes: “I already have a cure for cancer…”
Australia has a nice history in major medical breakthroughs; so stay with it, David!
For example: Maker of the Miracle Mould
“The story of penicillin – the first antibiotic used successfully to treat people with serious infectious diseases – begins with a bit of luck. Alexander Fleming, a British scientist, noticed in 1928 that mould had prevented the growth of bacteria in his lab. But the main plot of the story involves the rediscovery of penicillin 10 years later by an Australian scientist born one hundred years ago this year. Howard Florey and his dedicated team’s systematic, detailed work transformed penicillin from an interesting observation into a life saver.”
“If I get the drift of all these blogs right- you are basically saying that there is a conspiracy theory whereby climate scientists are manipulating science, funding and publications on a mass scale.”
There’s no “conspiracy” in the climate science world – but – imagine you are a professor at a university who needs to get funding to do research and publish papers in order to become tenured. As you respond to research grant proposals from mainly government entities (e.g. NSF, NOAA, NASA, etc.), you notice that if your research aim is to disprove any aspect of global warming dogma, your funding proposal is rejected. Further, you begin to notice that papers submitted to journals which go against the “consensus” are similarly rejected. In this environment, it won’t be long before you (a) leave academia due to lack of funding and publications, or (b) write papers favorable to the AGW agenda knowing this will bring in the research dollars.
Unfortunately for the climate science community, the line between objective science and hard core political advocacy has already been crossed by people such as Jim Hansen and Mark Serreze. Morevover, the silence of the community to their antics tells me that they are still too afraid of losing their funding to try to reign in their loose cannons.
The temp map shows N.Hamp was a way above average in April. I’d check out some more of their weather stations because on the other side of the northern border weive had an unremittingly cold spring. By the way, it froze in more than a dozen communities in N.H. last night and here are the short term forecasts for tonight – check out Colbrook and few others where it is expected to drop to -3C (26F):
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/usnh0044
“You’re having a giraffe” ( cockney rhyming slang for having a laugh for those of you who are emigres from the mother country) comes to mind as I read Rick’s childish posts.
As he seems to have so much time on his hands that he can waste his life researching a “politics essay” perhaps he would be better employed collating the wealth of published data that refutes AGW and becoming the first to have done that.
He could then publish on the Warmist sites that I suspect are his normal habitat.
Bye Bye Nick…….
Rick, a better angle on your argument is to examine concurrent weather events with each major spike and rise in the temperature trend over the past century. Or each ice melt. Or glacier retreat. Where was the jet stream? What were the oceans doing? What were the trade winds up to? Examine the noise, not the linear statistical line, and the variable in play at the time. The line is not the data. Remember the scene in the Medicine Man? The scientists knocked their brains out trying to find the secret chemical in the flower that cured cancer, sure that it was there but so complicated it would be very difficult to duplicate. They reran analysis after analysis and double checked all the variables conncected to harvesting and preparing the flower extract. Except one. It turned out to be the ants, a variable that was concurrent with the flower and harvest. Might the climate trend turn out to be…the weather? Or can it be dismissed like the ants?
@Smokey (03:22:09) :
I read the paper you cited first a year ago and I found it interesting. I have never cited it in a climate discussion, though, I don’t know what to reply if they tell me that the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is not the oracle of climate science.
And one more thing Rick. If this is a dissertation, and you are a candidate for a Ph.D., why in the hell are you saying what someone else has said with nothing new to add? Isn’t this activity supposed to prove your worth as an investigator? What makes you worthy of the degree if you can’t say something new, or present a different angle, or question a conclusion? You seem more on a Masters track than a Ph.D. track.
Smokey, I think that’s the last we’ll hear from Rick…
Rick wrote : It doesn’t make any sense to a rational observer. I mean- who wants climate change to happen, not many people- I don’t-
Well Rick, a LOT of people want the power/money they will get by controlling the world’s energy, which is the end result if this issue is believed.
Do you not understand how much money is already changing hands because of supposed AGW? How many more trillions will change hands if AGW inspired energy taxes are passed? Don’t under estimate the financial forces that lurk behind this debate.
Next point, you claim 4 volumes vs Zip, which means you really haven’t been looking very hard.
Worse, the 4 volumes you cite aren’t specifically about AGW. Most will be about some aspect of climate science or only tangentially related to it, a great many with a link saying “if the (most extreme) warming the IPCC predicts happens then …..”
Next point, a great deal of the published climatic data relies on statistical analysis of data. Something that climate scientists aren’t necessarily that good at. The foundational work on global temperatures and past recent climate is in fact done by a fairly small group of researchers and the worst part of that is that in many cases they won’t make their data or methods available for inspection.
See Steve McIntyre’s excellent site http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5962 for many more details on flaws in recent scientific papers and a little more about the value of peer review in climatic science.
Arthur
David Archibald (23:59:55) :
rephelan (20:52:58) :
I already have a cure for cancer.
Dr. Archibald, you are an inspiration. Broccoli sprouts? Well, as Master Kung’s disciples are reported to have said: “I thank you for your instruction and with your permission I will now go to put it into practice.”
Roger Carr (04:21:58) :
I didn’t know that. With typically American ethnocentrism I was sure it was invented here.
Smokey (03:22:09) :
I’ve said before that you were good. Rick is almost certainly a troll but I’m going to have a whack at your reading list. Thanks.
urederra,
It was a peer reviewed paper, written by climatologists. That makes it relevant. And you’re right, it was interesting. It has also been cited here before.
Rick (21:36:34) :
I’m working on a politics essay on climate change- I can’t seem to find a single published paper that refutes the publications detailed in the IPCC. I had thought this was an outrageous claim but it appears to be true.
The quantity of published papers is not the measure of science. Have you read Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”? It might be a good idea before you attempt to write on “the politics of science” — or in this case the politics of a particular scientific issue. Most peer reviewed publications present “normal science.” Anomalies tend to get ignored.
So rather than count up all the papers that supposedly support the claims of the IPCC, you ask whether there is any evidence of anomalies with the IPCC claims. For example, how is CO2 induced global warming supposed to work? The models that IPCC relies upon say that the troposphere should be warming faster than the surface? How’s that working out? The models say that the poles should warm faster than the tropics. How’s that working out? And have you looked at the temperature data for yourself? There is no significant warming since the 1998 El Nino. Global temperatures have either plateaued, or have even declined. Now that’s an anomaly.
I have turned to these blogs by way of investigation- and you guys don’t even seem to bother with peer reviewed science. All of the posts I have followed here lead to unpublished material. Is this really the case?
I’ll suggest a few specific publications for you. But first let me give you some general pointers. First, Roger Pielke Sr.’s web site is a good starting place if you want links to published, peer reviewed literature, that may in some way question the normal science — or conventional wisdom — of climate change:
http://climatesci.org/
Another good place to find references to peer reviewed literature that may in some way challenge the principle tenets of AGW is
http://www.co2science.org/index.php
And a third is
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/
All three of the sites routinely survey and comment upon peer reviewed literature from a “skeptical” perspective. Until you have thoroughly exhausted these resources, you are in no position to say that there is no peer reviewed literature that runs counter to the prevailing normal science of IPCC and AGW.
Can you please post ANYTHING you have that is published, and clearly refutes that very high levels of CO2 does not equal warmer atmosphere????
I sense a bit of logical fallacy here (petitio principii). There are few, even among the skeptic or anti-AGW crowd who deny that rising levels of CO2 lead to warmer temperatures. There is, however, a major dispute over whether the assumed positive feedback role of water vapor actually exists. Without that, the effect of rising CO2 on temperatures is likely to be modest, and not at all harmful; maybe even beneficial. A good place to start reading up on this, with links to peer reviewed literature, would be the following post by Pielke Sr.:
http://climatesci.org/2007/12/18/climate-metric-reality-check-3-evidence-for-a-lack-of-water-vapor-feedback-on-the-regional-scale/
For an example of a published peer reviewed paper questioning the accuracy of the feedback response built into climate models, see:
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/papers/Pierce_et_al_AIRS_vs_models_2006GL027060.pdf
And then there is
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions
So the literature is out there, if you really want to find it. Are there rebuttals or other points of view? You betcha. And that is the point! There are disputed aspects of the prevailing normal science (“consensus”) of climate change. The science is not settled, and the idiot who first uttered that expression shall go down ignominiously in the annals of science.
Rick (22:23:22) :
“I have a background in biomedical research. And from my perspective I have four volumes of published papers on one side, and nothing on the other. ”
——
Climate science is nothing like biomedical research. You can take the four volumes and throw out any studies that say “we simulated X in a climate model and …”
Would the FDA approve a new drug in which the results are merely described in a computer model?
So far, the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled medical studies show that the drug has some warming and some natural variability but far less warming than predicted in the drug company’s software model. In addition, it appears the results may have been contaminated and adjusted by the drug company vice-presidents themselves.
Meanwhile, the drug-company continues to insist to the FDA that the new drug should be prescribed to the 6.5 billion people on the planet because its 10 runs of the software program predict that the 6.5 billion people will be very ill and even die in 100 years if they do not take this new drug immediately – right now.
The skeptic side would prefer to examine the actual data from a few more studies first and point out that the early studies show the drug may not have the benefits claimed. But the drug company does not believe further data examination is warranted and it would, in fact, be “foolish” to examine the actual data when it contradicts the software model. This actual data from an independent researcher is “nonsense” and will be adjusted in further software runs.
Leif – Slightly off the topic, but some time ago you posted a spectral analysis of the solar activity. You showed how you handled the end points, or what we referred to as “leakage”. Could you please post the reference? Thanks
Well-said, Dave!
Smokey “peer-“reviewed”? I didn’t know surgeons were peers of climate researchers? Isnt’ it the same journal where papers can be found on
-the “myth of AIDS being due to VIH”
-the idea that “smoking doesn’t do any arm”
-the hypothesis that “abortion causes breast cancer”
-Quackwatch lists JPandS as an untrustworthy, non-recommended periodical
-An editorial in Chemical & Engineering News described JPandS as a “purveyor of utter nonsense.”
-Investigative journalist Brian Deer wrote that the journal is the “house magazine of a right-wing American fringe group [AAPS]” and “is barely credible as an independent forum.”
Anthony, you really must have hit a nerve with your Surfacestations Report. It seems there is more troll-noise here than usual — and some of it government sponsored, or at least paid for? My, my. At least their noise brings forth the music of science on this blog and their silly nonsense soon is silenced.
The way it works here is most unsuual for blogs; there is a science lesson from the troll-noise every time rather than a shouting match. The excellent crew of commenters are raising the science IQ of the thousands who read the posts every single day. Your leadership inspires in many ways.
REPLY: What can I say? My blog is like a TV game show: “trolling for scholars.” – Anthony
Rick (21:36:34) :
“I’m working on a politics essay on climate change- I can’t seem to find a single published paper that refutes the publications detailed in the IPCC. I had thought this was an outrageous claim but it appears to be true.”
Self published 5 minutes ago on a blog. It’s focus is a very important aspect of the last IPCC report. Get in a comment lad. Tell me where I am going wrong.
Its called Climate Change ‘a la naturale’
Find it at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
The introduction goes like this:
Good science is plausible. It makes sense. Here is something from the UNIPCC that makes very little sense. It is from section1.4.6 of the most recent report accessible at:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf
“The mechanisms and predictive skill of ENSO are still under discussion. In particular, it is not clear how ENSO changes with, and perhaps interacts with, a changing climate.”
Has it occurred to those who have endorsed that statement that ENSO cycles might actually be responsible for observed climate change? Can we be sure that the thing that forces change on the inter-annual time scale is somehow inoperative on longer time scale? Of course not. We don’t even know what it is.
This post provides evidence that warming cycles in the tropics (ENSO in the Pacific manifestation) are directly responsible for the change that has occurred.
It is futility to try to convince “Rick” of anything. Aside from the fact that he is a likely a troll, he has evidently never tried to question the “team” on RealClimate. Go into any church on Sunday and stand up and question the doctrine. You will be lucky if you make it out of the church alive. Yet their beliefs are based only on “faith”. It is not a “global conspiracy” we are up against. It is belief system. Let’s look at Dr. Baliunas for example. She has published a number of papers questioning the science. She is no longer publishing these types of papers. She has been threatened with termination by her University. She has a family to support. What would YOU do when faced with this kind of muzzling ? The University is concerned about their funding, so they HAVE to put the muzzle on her in order for the University to survive. Is this a system where science can question and publish freely? Open your eyes “Rick” and stop inspecting your own colon. Face to face, people like “Rick” never have anything to say. Naval gazer. The anonymity of the net allows for “cyber-bravery”, an illusion of power that can be acquired no where else. Once again, Smokey and friends laying the “smack-down”. What will be “Rick’s” next course of action? The Precautionary Principal? Do it for the children? The initial post by “Rick” was pretty transparent. ” I cannot find any published works refuting AGW”. That is because he didn’t even look.
Sorry forgot to add “rant/off”.
Smokey
A thank you for rick as he seems to have lost interest and your efforts should remind everyone that the science is not settled.
J. Bob (07:01:16) :
You showed how you handled the end points, or what we referred to as “leakage”. Could you please post the reference?
http://www.leif.org/research/FFT-Power-Spectrum-SSN-1700-2008.png
The idea is that if your data interval 1700-2008 = 309 years = 3*103 has an integer number of ‘waves’ there will be power at that frequency just because the wave fits. So, there will be some power at 103 years just because of the fact that exactly three 103-yr waves fit into 309 years. To overcome that a bit, compute the power spectra for intervals 1700-2008, 1701-2008, 1702-2008, 1703-2008, …, 1716-2008 [just arbitrary stop year 1716] and plot them all together. If a peak varies a lot it is spurious, as a ‘true’ peak should not depend critically on the precise ‘window’. Anyway, this is the ‘poor’ man’s criteria for peak stability. There are much fancier tools for that, but I like to keep it simple.
The original issue that prompted this plot was to what the 11-year peak was comprised of two precise sub-peaks. I would say from the graph that it isn’t.
“If I get the drift of all these blogs right- you are basically saying that there is a conspiracy theory whereby climate scientists are manipulating science, funding and publications on a mass scale.”
Rick, where have you been? Are you not aware that men have been conspiring to control thought for thousands of years? I hope my tone isn’t harsh, but come on now. You don’t believe in corruption? With millions (billions, trillions) of dollars at stake, you honestly believe men will not lie and cheat to get a piece of the pie.
Welcome to the real world, buddy. There has never been a moment in time where there weren’t organized cons, scams, conspiracy and manipulation. The bigger the prize – the bigger the potential. These things we know.
Indeed, the goals is to destroy an older, smaller power (the authority of science and scientists) and replace it with the new greater power (the state). AGW as legitimate science was never the intention. It was and is the rhetorical device that was chosen to divide people- the believers succumb willingly, and the rest of us are now a smaller group, more easily conquered.
Andrew
David Archibald (23:59:55) :
The the complete recipe would be broccoli sprouts AND chile / red pepper(source of capsaicine)?
Though this is OT ,but kind of weather is not climate story, today i heard on a local radio station (in Lima, Peru) the surprising news that virus H1V1N1 was not new, that strain was found back in 2001 at the city of Pucallpa, Peru, in seven patients…How does it appear now as NEW?….