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.
Rick
You could also wander over to Climatologist Roger Pielke’s site
http://climatesci.org/
There are many listed peer review studies there that question the IPCC’s assumptions of atmospheric CO2 levels as a major climate driver.
Best wishes, ian
Rick
Additionally, there are several publications available including:
1. (the aforementioned) ‘Heaven and Earth’ by Plimer
2. (recently released) ‘Climate of Extremes’ by Michaels & Balling Jr
3. ‘Climate Confusion’ by Spencer
Lastly you may want to check the site of Demetris Koutsoyiannis for peer reviewed articles.
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/dk/
Smokey,
Thanks for that list- that is exactly what I have been trawling the internet for- why is such a list so hard to find? I have come across the more prominent of those only- Christy, Soon, McIntyre etc. Why did you hold back- if you have a full list I would like to have it- can you post it somewhere?
I don’t buy the conspiracy theory crap- I wonder how many of you truly do? And how many of you are simply putting up with it as bedfellows. Seems to me you should separate that from the scientific argument. There are two streams to the argument here, and one stream doesn’t seem at all rational.
I disagree that medical research and climate research are different. Its all probabilities. For example, you may not have a drug accepted without a human trial, but you have many, many drugs rejected before they ever reach a human trial. This may be on the basis of trialing the drug in another animal. Modeling is not such a big deal for knocking something out from the get-go.
This line seems to be a fundamental flaw in the argument- your null hypothesis is that increased CO2 is completely safe. In medical research (and science) the null hypothesis for intervention (and changing the atmosphere is certainly intervention) is that it is unsafe, and must be proved safe. I can’t see how anyone can fault that logic.
Since there is a massive amount of literature saying that high CO2 is ‘unsafe’- I am looking for papers that show that it has no effect. Such papers are hard to find.
I’m not sure what people think my motivations are- there are some paranoid people on the internet. I also don’t think anyone could fault my following summary- which is rational. That the scientific argument (that CO2 is safe) is being lost, but the political argument (no need to take action) is being won- there has been no serious steps taken to reduce CO2 emissions.
Going from the internet- most of the anti AGW blogs suggest that the scientific argument (against the consensus) is being won, and the political argument lost. This does not reflect reality.
Ken Cosco, one of my fav profs at WOU, led us through the process of critiquing “peer reviewed” journal articles. I continue to benefit from his class as an educator directed to apply “research based interventions”, compliments of NCLB, in reading and math. Based on his wise counsel, I have discovered that the phrase “research based interventions” that often accompanies packaged intervention curriculum, complete with copies of the peer reviewed journal article proving its worth, is nothing more than an advertising gimmick and is to be questioned, investigated, and examined as diligently as an occult GI bleed. Trust me, the phrase “peer reviewed” is meaningless. Learn to read with a discerning eye.
Sooo many comments to look through.
Actually I was going to stop posting- I am just visiting. But I notice people seem to think I would see the list of papers Smokey has given and run away and sulk or something. Why?- don’t I just need to go through those papers?? My point here all along has been that there are four IPCC reports with literally thousands of papers in them.
You can’t write an essay with URLs as references. I think some people are very unfamiliar with how formally science works. You will never prove anything without peer-reviewed journal publications. You are banging your head against a brick wall if you think you will convince scientists with gray literature. Hence many of the papers and books posted here are useless- its like me writing a book on fertility or something- no one in the medical profession is suddenly going to accept anything in that book until it is peer reviewed.
I would have to accept the conspiracy theory to accept that the IPCC reports had deliberately left out the papers that showed increasing CO2 has minimal affect on the atmosphere. I additionally have done library data base searches and web searches and can’t find a paper that shows it is safe to increase CO2.
OK- I will be going now, but will check back for the expanded list by Smokey.
And here is another Weather is not Climate Story. By NSIDC. The conclusions are baseless and an embarrassment to the organization. They will likely eat those words. Somebody do a screen capture of this article quick!
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
I’ll take a shot at it…
Rick, it’s not paranoia, it’s “we’ve seen this before”. This is how trolls operate (not the kind that live under bridges, the kind that tow bait all through a forum or blog comment section and hope to stir up a feeding frenzy).
It starts with “I’m just asking questions”, but no matter how much material is shown to the, er, person, it’s never enough. Often the person claims to be attempting to convince someone else.
So far you’ve demonstrated absolutely classic “troll” activity, so if you are genuine that would be a surprise.
BZZT… wrong. Apparently you are unaware that a large number of, you know, Scientists post and read here. And at least one has already explained to YOU that peer review is essentially meaningless. And again, who are these “peers” doing the “reviewing”??
The goal has NEVER been to convince scientists. The goal was to convince the gullible, which has succeeded (but is now beginning to fail as reason and cooling take over).
Science will prevail. Eventually. Right now a mumbo-jumbo form of pseudoscience has the upper hand, but… we’ll see.
Come on Ricky boy, I’m right here. Do you know anything about the IPCC process? Have you read it through? Whatever science you claim to be doing, I hope you don’t get very far, as you seem to have little capacity for research. I think you are a (snip) disturber and nothing more. How did Michael Mann get through “peer-review”? The hockey stick paper (still presented as the focus for the IPCC document, but you knew that, right?) has so many problems that it is laughable. A joke. Dr. Willie Soon has many papers that are peer-reviewed. Dr. Richard Lindzen has countless peer-reviewed papers AND teaches at MIT. It seems that you dismissed them outright without even looking. It is very clear to me what you are trying to do here. Oh, what tangled webs we weave, …
Leif Svalgaard (22:09:48) :
Steve Hempell (20:58:25) :
The math has to be done right.
Ah, I finally see that you are integrating the excess above 1365.60. That will give you the [almost] correct numbers you gave. I apologize for thinking you integrated all the way from zero.
Anyway, the comment about time-constant still stands.
If you have a temperature series that you trust, try to plot that on top of the TSI curve.
So Leif what are you implying here?
1) That the sun’s activity did increase overall from the beginning of the 18th thru to most of the 20th century by somewhat the percentages I indicated?
2) My “math” is done reasonably correctly. ie intregrating by determining the AUC.? Laborious and silly as that method may be.
Now what this increased activity did regarding the climate I have no idea, but I like messing with the idea that it might. As you suggest the time constant is problematic. I have done some work with temperatures which I presented to you last year, but I had the impression from you that the “math” was not done right so my results were nonsensical. If you do think the math is essentially correct, I will revisit what I did before using some of your suggestions. Maybe that will convince me that you are absolutely correct!!
By the way, I don’t think TSI in and of itself, has any important effect on temperatures. But what of all that other increased “activity”? It is possible scientists don’t know everything!
Ha Ha- lighten up guys- what a tangled web indeed. I am well aware of what a troll is- and by definition I *am* now a troll because I have come in and stirred up comment and I intend to leave. I have no defense against that obviously. All that has really happened however, is that I have gotten sucked into this blog thread. Is there something deliberately smart-ass that I have posted or particularly provocative? What underhanded agenda am I trying to push here??
I haven’t made anything up. I’m not doing any science- I am a grad student working on a semester long politics project. I am currently visiting a climate research institution (so you would probably assume I am biased) as part of this research- which is how I got onto this blog in the first place. I’m looking for lists of scientific papers- which someone here has provided part of- I actually have a decent list now- but I’ve knocked those into peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed groups. Thats the only question I have asked here- I am not doing any scientific assessment.
I think my summary is still fair- that one the one hand you have a science debate- and on the other you have conspiracy theories. I have been reading the IPCC reports- they are the obvious starting point for this issue. I’m not sure how many people here have looked through those, because there are literally thousands of papers in them.
Also, I do have a background in bio-med. I don’t buy this whole peer review is nonsense- its what has kept me posting- I disagree with many of you.
Its a really big call that peer review is worthless- you can’t expect that anyone is simply going to accept that from reading a blog- no matter how many times you say it.
Things get published in peer reviewed journals that turn out to be incorrect. They are *always* overturned by another publication in a peer reviewed journal. It the contrary finding is not worthy of publication, it won’t overturn the previous.
One poster here writes- ‘trust me, peer review sucks’ or some such. This is the point- why should we trust you? Peer review is how science operates- if you disagree with something- then publish your work. I can’t think of a single notable scientist, or scientific discovery, that has not submitting to the publishing process (in the last 400 years).
I think we are at a stalemate with that line of argument- you can’t convince me that peer review is crap.
Rick –
WRT Peer review – check out this paper
REF: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Tim Clark: are you living in Wonderland?
“(1) With a proper grounding in the basics, access to appropriate resources, and a lively mind, it is easy for any intelligent and intellectually-inclined person to master “cutting edge” knowledge/research.”
So, it means everyone can actually calculate the quantum energy levels of NH3 in the J-J coupling mode? I mean, everybody can easily have access to the basics of quantum theory, everybody knows what ammonia looks like, so can you please tell me about these levels? What about the relativistic effects?
Or maybe we could speak about dynamical systems, since this is the main topic. Can you please remind me how one can extract the bifurcation curves from the Fredholm alternative? And how the Poincare development of resonances helps in understanding co-dimension 2 convergence of manifolds?
There is a BIG gap between understanding more or less things and doing them properly, confront them with real numbers.
“(2) Many Ph.D.s — new and old — that I’ve met and worked with have been morons. Their analyses are cant, their research the misuse of techniques they understand poorly, if at all. One tenured professor at Harvard for whom I worked had an international reputation as a methodologist in political science. His ignorance was such that he could not write out the specifications for the statistical models he used — an exercise requiring nothing much more than a knowledge of high school algebra.”
I would say the proportion of “morons” as you say is much less with highly educated people than with the rest of the population.
“(3) I’ve known many non-Ph.D.s whose research and thought are at the cutting edge of the disciplines they work in and far exceed in quality that of Ph.D.s and tenured faculty in the field.”
So you can I suppose give me loads of examples of cutting-edge results widely acclaimed in the field of climate science, which were obtained by laymen?
I never tried to convince you that peer-review is crap. I still don’t believe you are telling the truth about what you do. You claim to have got sucked in, yet you made contentious points in your post. What did you think would happen? This is another indicator of your misrepresentation. As a bio-med student, you would know that many medications pass testing due to unscrupulous drug companies. It is their own interests they have at heart. How is that such a far stretch from climate science. Does it not bother you that these people who claim the “sky is falling”, stand to make millions of dollars off the notion that Co2 is harmful? People who work underground are often in conditions of 4,000ppm with NO ill effects. Greenhouses boost Co2 to 1,000ppm and consumers cannot tell the difference. Your logic is flawed. As a student of politics you clearly have an agenda. Politicians go which ever way the winds of votes blow them. It is currently the green agenda that is driving politics, but that is quickly coming to a close. People aren’t buying the rhetoric anymore. Anthropogenic C02 is going up, yet the planet is cooling. AGW is a theory that is dead in the water. People are realizing this , and the paradigm is shifting. Wouldn’t that be an interesting paper to submit to your “peers”?
Rick –
WRT Peer review – check out this paper on the Mann Hockey Stick
REF 1: http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
Especially page 40 in section 5.
And also.
REF 2: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/StupakResponse.pdf
The Mann et al hockey stick is a good case in point. The avenue to refute or otherwise their methods was clearly in the peer reviewed literature. This is the point I am making. People tried to, and did, publish their claims against this paper. I am told that subsequent reconstructions took note of some of these criticisms- this is the way it should work.
Similarly, it looks like people are trying to publish their work that is contrary to the observational centers. Though there is definitive as yet in a journal.
“AGW theory” is a little amorphous, but lets just say- of greatly increased CO2- totally safe? or potentially unsafe?
Whether you agree with it or not- the scientists currently saying it is ‘unsafe’ have a large body of work. Conventional (consensus) science will only be overturned if and when there are peer reviewed publications that demonstrate elevated CO2 is ‘safe’- and I guess that means showing that increasing CO2 will not elevate temperatures. Is there anything contentious about this line of reasoning?
David Ball- I’m not sure who you think I am or what I am up to. I did simply get sucked into this thread (is that not self evident?)- a troll would have gotten bored ages ago. I am a serial blogger in European Football forums, and this blog is positively church-like in comparison. Its actually stopping me doing work now.
Hence I am loathe to start this 😉 But I don’t think you can say that drug companies are perverting science. There have been many examples of unscrupulous behavior (which takes in a whole host of activities)- but that is a minority when you take the whole- a great percentage of our population is currently on medication, and it would be hard to argue that western medicine hasn’t delivered mass improvement in health. There are thousands of drugs on the market that are a result of good science. And where do you think bad science is categorically exposed? In the peer reviewed literature of course. The FDA won’t ban something without a formal study.
You can’t put the cart before the horse- you need to publish your results first.
Rick:
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. No one on the skeptical side has to prove the AGW wrong, they need to prove that they are right. They are the one’s demanding that the world embrace positively disasterous policies based on their assertions that the science is settled, which should be all the clue you need to decide that they are full of it. Of all the things out there purporting themselves to be a science, climate science is close to the least likely one to be able to claim to have settled anything. Compared to climate science, psychology and sociology look like euclidean geometry. There is also the point that the AGW promoters, having now morphed into the Climate Change crowd, have essentially declared that their theory is unfalsifiable, since everything that happens in any direction is still attributed to human actions. Since you claim your project is political in nature, you might be better served spending your time researching the political lineage and connections of the members of the IPCC panels, rather than trying to amass meaningless bibliographies of papers which are mostly notable for wild leaps beyond the data. Personally I don’t have a clue what is driving the climate, but from what I’ve observed in quite a few years of wading around in this stew, no one else does either, no matter what their scientific pedigree may be. You seem to think it would require a vast conspiracy to assemble the unified front of the AGW crowd, but conspiracies need not be vast to be effective. If you get control of the money, you control the agenda. I’ll repeat a recommendation I’ve made here before and suggest you Google “the Cloward-Piven strategy” and consider the politics of AGW in light of what you find there.
Well, I for one welcome Rick’s arrival. I mean, prior to this, who’d have thought to actually attempt fighting this scourge via official channels?
Clearly, publishing is the key. Thanks Rick.
Frank K: “There’s no “conspiracy” in the climate science world – but…your funding proposal is rejected… papers submitted to journals…are similarly rejected.”
So there’s no conspiracy – but conspiracy-type stuff keeps happening. This train of thought has now become unavoidable for climate sceptics in the face of the reality that few sceptical papers are published in the top science journals.
This fact of the paucity of top-flight publication by climate sceptics can be explained as a result of:
a) The low quality of papers by climate sceptics
b) A conspiracy to marginalise climate sceptics.
For obvious reasons, climate sceptics will reject (a), hence the preponderence of (b) in sceptic thinking, including among top names in climate scepticism. This is the case whether the specific claim is conspiracy, collusion, groupthink, greed, power-lust, fame etc.
In other words, the default argument for the paucity of sceptic publication is based on ideology rather than science.
Rick (21:45:05) wrote in part: “I can’t think of a single notable scientist, or scientific discovery, that has not submitting to the publishing process (in the last 400 years)…”
The web, the internet, is a disruptive media, Rick. It has superseded many well-established institutions. I believe it will supersede the “journals” you speak of, and that right now, on WUWT?, we are a part of that process of creating a new-way which will become the-way.
People like me are untutored bystanders who can only puzzle, cheer and question from the sidelines. But perhaps even this is a part of the new peer-review; the innocent little boy who noticed the emperor had no clothes?
Particularly interesting to me is that scientists here of international reputation willingly respond to even simplistic questions. They suffer fools gladly, and we all benefit.
…publishing process … in the last 400 years… Mmm; and I have not had to ride a horse to the post for half a century now…
Leif Svalgaard (21:40:58) :
I have no problems with your numbers but we still have 0.5 W/m^2 TOA. The potential is one cm^3 over m^2 H2O + 1 Deg C every 8.368 seconds or 60 Deg C cm^3 over m^2 H2O every 502.08 minutes. I know this is not realized and my math may be wrong but percentages are so passe.
“People like me are untutored bystanders who can only puzzle, cheer and question from the sidelines. But perhaps even this is a part of the new peer-review; the innocent little boy who noticed the emperor had no clothes?”
Yes, yes, yes.
Steve Hempell (21:07:12) :
1) That the sun’s activity did increase overall from the beginning of the 18th thru to most of the 20th century by somewhat the percentages I indicated?
It is the ‘overall’ that is too broad IMO. Solar activity has not reached higher levels since back then, they have lasted somewhat longer, as you show.
It is possible scientists don’t know everything!
We certainly don’t, but we do know something.
MartinGAtkins (04:52:33) :
but percentages are so passe.
And often inappropriate. E.g. In 1810 the sunspot number was zero, last year, the sunspot number was 2.9. What is the percentage increase?
Flanagan (22:33:23) :
Tim Clark: are you living in Wonderland?
(1) If I was interested in those topics, I could master them.
(2) I agree with significant segments of the general population being morons.
(3)First, you research the authors on every paper written on every aspect of the climate debate in the last 20 years, including but not limited to: geology, oceanography, hydrology, dendrology, physics, paleontology, biology, sociology, computer science, cartography, kinesiology, plant physiology, etc. Then determine the percentage of PhD’s versus M.S.’s, etc. and then I’ll discuss the relative importance of non-PhD influence.
BTW- My focus *is* on politics (but not conspiracy theories). I am incredulous that people here are telling to to not bother even looking at the science. I am visiting a research center this week. How many of you have done the same and spoken to scientists face to face? How many have bothered to read the IPCC reports? To say thi sis unnecessary is truly bizarre.
Dave Wendt (23:48:15) :
Rick: Your premise is fundamentally flawed. No one on the skeptical side has to prove the AGW wrong, they need to prove that they are right.
I put it to you that it is your premise that is flawed. What you are saying is that CO2 concentrations are not increasing. OR you are saying that they are increasing, however this has no affect on climate.
You cannot take this position as a null hypothesis- since increasing atmospheric CO2 is essentially an intervention.
Following your argument would mean that a doctor administering a drug takes the position that it is safe until proven unsafe, with the onus on someone else to prove it is unsafe. This is clearly not how it works.
The climate scientists have a wealth of published papers showing that they believe CO2 increases are ‘unsafe’.
From a public health perspective- this cannot be ignored. You cannot dismiss these claims without doing any studies yourself to prove your null hypothesis. There is no way that would stand up in a court of law should litigation take place (and it probably will come to that, and the scientists seem to welcome this).
Hence you need to do these fundamental studies. I cannot find papers where ‘skeptical’ scientists have shown that CO2 is not increasing, or where they have done their own temperature reconstructions, their own modeling of CO2, their own modeling of natural climate mechanisms, laboratory studies of CO2 and radiation.
All these things have been published many times from the climate scientist.
In order to prove that action needs to be taken immediately and drastically, that requires much more work. But to clam that skeptical scientists need do nothing at all is also bizarre.
All this needs to be done to prove the case that CO2 is ‘safe’.