Temperatures dropped to a record low in Prince Edward Island overnight Tuesday, with reports of frost throughout the province.
An official record low of 3.8 C was set early Wednesday morning at Charlottetown airport.
The previous record for that date was 5.1 C, set in 2005.
Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said that to his knowledge, frost has never been reported before in July in P.E.I.
“That 3.8 we got last night kind of sticks out as being lower than some of the other records for anytime in early July,” Robichaud told CBC News on Wednesday.
“So we’re looking at a significant event,” he said.
Environment Canada has issued a frost risk warning in low-lying areas of the province for Wednesday night. The temperature is expected to dip to 4 C.
The forecast for Thursday, however, calls for sunny skies and a temperature of 22 C for the province.
“Though we have to see where temperatures go over the next few months, Bob Tisdale reported June SST’s have the 4th highest peak in the entire dataset after 1998, 2003, and 2006, if it goes down immediately it will likely not mean anything rivaling or surpassing 1998. If it does mean a upward trend since 1998 in global temps. then the warmers are going to throw a party declaring victory over those who say CO2 isn’t causing the world to warm.”
Perhaps the GRB / SSW event back in January is finally transferring down to the earth’s MAIN energy budget: the oceans.
See number 7 in http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ThereWasNoGlobalWarmingBefore1997(February15th2009).pdf
Let the warmers throw a party. They don’t have any conclusive evidence supporting their cause. None.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Being a statistician means never having to say your certain.
I guess the shoe is moving to the other foot now, after 20 years of every tornado, hurricane, drought, heatwave, spring flood and record high temp being a sign of the apoC02lypse. Now its just weather when record lows and summer frosts start appearing.
What concerns me most is that if the global warming since the 70’s has just maxed out in the past 5 years or so, should it be cooling back off this fast? I would expect cooler averages, but not such a flood of all-time records lows being set when we’re only a few years off the max of the last warming cycle.
Justin Sane (18:36:41) :
“Even though there is no longer any ‘Global Warming’, the so called average temperature is still above levels from the the past 100 years, and therefore these temperature anomalies are nothing but weather extremes, not cooling as such.”
True. Until these temperatures become part of the average. Then they are climate and not weather.
See, weather is like an egg. Frost hatches on Prince Edward Island in July, and it takes two (or maybe fifty, depends on who is doing the nesting) full years for it incubate and hatch into climate. Now, this frost is in its infancy and is very naughty, so ‘corrections’ have to be made for the frost’s own good. It can’t grow up thinking it can just do whatever it wants. We need to ‘warm it up’ to our way of thinking.
Ron de Haan (18:13:49) : Not even in 1816?
Take a look at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/GHCN_Temperature_Stations.png
Notice the lack of RED dots in that part of Canada? No thermometers of record older than 70 to 90 years…
This is a point I’ve tried to make several times, but folks don’t seem to care much about it: The thermometer record is completely inadequate in both space and time for making ANY statements about “climate” over periods of any significant length of time or any significant surface area.
Other posters mention violation of the Nyquist criterion, but that picture above makes it obvious. We just don’t know and we just can’t know what the temperature history has been. The best we can do is make up rampant guesses based on some (hopefully) related thing. Proxies that may or may not be adequate or fantasies of computer code as in GIStemp.
So unless you have a newspaper morgue from back then and a team of folks to read them looking for reports of frost, you are SOL… (So Out of Luck).
A bit OT, Can anyone point me to the correct place to obtain timeseries data for Canadian surface temperatures? I have only been able to find short term stuff. I would like to look at data from my local area (frost warning here tonight), hopefully over fairly long time periods.
Basil, is that map very reliable you think? Some large regions have few dots and don’t give a full picture.
And what does GRB mean?
Warmer sea surface temperatures mean the Earth’s climate is cooling.
Simplistically you can think of the Earth’s climate as a process of heat gain and retention by the oceans due high humidity greenhouse effect, then release to the atmosphere, transfer by weather over land and to high latitudes, where it is radiated out into space.
Higher SSTs mean more heat in the atmosphere, which means more heat radiated out into space.
Which is why ocean heat content is the only valid measure of whether the Earth’s climate is warming or not. And why atmospheric temperatures may well be a negative indicator of climate change over periods of a decade or more.
The 1998 super El Nino probably caused the subsequent decade of cooling ocean temperatures (although we only have good data for the last 5 years or so), which in turn caused the atmospheric cooling of the last couple of years.
Try Environment Canada, historical records
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/Welcome_e.html
Justin Sane (18:36:41) : Even though there is no longer any ‘Global Warming’, the so called average temperature is still above levels from the the past 100 years, and therefore these temperature anomalies are nothing but weather extremes, not cooling as such.
The “global average temperature” is a fiction. Completely the product of computer codes stretching data from one thermometer to another location up to 1500 km away and re-writing the history of temperatures based on methods that are senseless (I’ve read the code, it is crazy. WHY would changing the equipment from 2000 to 2009 change the history in 1890 to 1990? Just nuts.)
So you can not, with any veracity, say that the “global average temperature” means anything. Much more valuable (AND more accurate) are the “weather” reports from all over the planet that it’s abnormally cold:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/south-hemisphere-record-early-snow/
I’ve stopped adding to the posting since the list was getting so long… but there is a reasonable selection for all over the world in the posting.
Then there is the global crop failure that is setting up:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/argentine-drought-crop-failure/
Latest on Bloomberg in the last couple of days was that Argentina might stop all wheat exports. Add to that the reduced yields in Canada and we have a pattern from both poles…
from: http://www.cwb.ca/public/en/newsroom/releases/2009/061109.jsp
“Cold weather across the Prairies this spring has had a detrimental effect on planting and early crop development in most growing regions,” said Bruce Burnett, CWB director of weather and market analysis, at the annual CWB grain industry briefing today. “In addition, soil moisture levels are dangerously low in parts of Alberta and western Saskatchewan, where dry conditions have persisted since last fall.”
(I added the bold)
I know, that’s only the western hemisphere… just half the planet. There are cold reports from other hemispheres in the “record early snow” link. I started with Southern, then kept adding.
The good news is that the cooler weather in North Africa has raised their wheat production. IFF we are very very lucky, the areas lost to cold in the polar regions will be offset by added growth as the cold makes areas like North Africa, closer to the Equator, more temperate and a bit wetter.
Now you may be happy with computer fantasies, but I need to know what is happening in the real world where real wheat is grown. In the real world, the poles have gone very cold and moisture is persisting in the eastern part of Canada long after it ought to have dried enough for planting. This determines how much I have to eat (both literally and figuratively).
The computer can go play with it’s naughty bits all it wants to, the reality is that it’s cold at the poles, and the cold is spreading toward the equator for the next bunch of years.
DISCLOSURE: I had traded out of most of my JJG (a grains basket) when the momentum went out of it. I have just traded back into it. I’ll be adding more as the world grain situation clarifies.
While the long term trend will be to higher food prices, no market goes straight up. They move in waves. And it isn’t about being right, it’s about what the guys with $Billions think is right. So you may be right, but if they are wrong, you don’t bet against them when they are moving big money. You step aside until the momentum turns, then hop back in, in size. It’s the “up / down” ratio that matters over time, and they can make “down” run for a while by being “wrong in size” … and you need to be timing to be “right” just a little bit, but not too much, before “they” figure it out…
“polar regions” probably ought to have been “pole ward reagions” that is, places like Canada nearer to the poles…
I found this paper:
22 year solar modulation of Earth’s northern hemisphere temperatures
T. Baranyi and A. Ludmany
Heliophysical Obaservatory, Debrecen, Hungary
H. Coffey
NGDC, NOAA, Boulder, CO USA
Solar Wind effects on the Earth marked out according to Solar Equatorial and Polar particle events being parallel or antiparallel. The areas in Europe & North America are different according to which state the Sun is in. 2 nice maps to show you where those areas are.
Prince Edward Island is in the lee according to the paper.
REPLY: Got a link to a PDF? – Anthony
Pamela Gray (19:15:13) : However, in an unstable loopy jet stream pattern, the range of temps is bound to be greater than when the jet stream is stable. It seems a reasonable hypothesis to say that low temp records coincide with a loopy jet stream while high temps coincide with a straight jet stream.
Pamela, you’ve got me thinking about the “loopy jet stream”…
I’ve commented before that the wind here has been more “blustery”. Normally (that being the last 30 years that I’ve lived here) summers have a 3 or 4 day cycle. Long hot days, central valley heats up, starts to pull cool air in from the coast in a nice steady breeze, about day 4 the central valley cools and the pump stops. Repeat until fall… Lately, we’ve had this puffy “blustery” more chaotic winds. Not harder, so much as highly variable and “puffy”. As though there were more vertical component causing more turbulence.
Some thoughts come from this:
1) Might this be related to the loss of 2 jet liners in the one month? More vertical velocity and turbulence? (Unanswerable speculative ponder…)
2) How do we measure vertical wind speeds? Is there a vertical wind speed data set? Do we even KNOW what the average vertical mixing extent is?
3) Might this be the mechanism by which the loopy jet stream (or maybe even the thinner air blanket, solar effects, whatever… ) causes net cooling? More air mass moving up high to cool, then dropping faster?
So does anyone measure the vertical component and how does a loopy jet stream change it?
Ron de Haan: I had the same thought. If Environment Canada (their NWS equivalent) thinks that frost in July is unprecedented they need to go back to the history books. (oops I forgot, according to the AGW crowd before man’s CO2 input the climate didn’t vary at all-the infamous hockey stick)
Not only in Canada. In Finland lowest nigthtime temperature was -3.9 C on 6.7. This is rare.
In Kuusamo daily mean temp was as low as 4,6 C on 4.7. which is lowest temp in July there since 1959.
Basil 20:10:54
Wonder what the hotspot was on eastern Hudson Bay shore? Anyone know?
E.M.Smith (21:48:33) :
Not sure if the link will help you, but you did have me searching and I found this interesting bit:
“The non-zero mean vertical wind speed transports heat, water vapor and carbon dioxide across the plane of the actual measuring height, while this transport is undetectable by the eddy covariance system, which is based on the measurement of the fluctuating signals. Focusing on carbon dioxide, this transport can be severe during nighttime, when carbon dioxide usually accumulating below the inversion layer causing high vertical gradients of CO2 near the ground.”
http://nimbus.elte.hu/~bzoli/thesis/node17.html
Again, not really sure if it is helpful, but the transport of CO2 can be severe during nighttime, and nights are longer in winter. More transport of CO2 in winter would logically follow. Frost in July would not. Haven’t done a whole bunch of reading, but again, your questions were intriguing. Hope I helped.
The link to the Baranyi / Ludmany/ Coffey report:
http://fenyi.sci.klte.hu/publ/Baranyi_et_al1998.pdf
BARANYI,T., LUDMÁNY,A., Coffey,H. 1998, 22 year solar modulation of Earth’s northern hemisphere temperatures, Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 2269-2272
Not surprising. We seem to be stuck in a pattern of stuck upper level Lows that keep on pumping cool air into the NE. Here (Buffalo, NY) we’ve been lucky to see temps break 70°F so far this July. From now to the first week of August should be the hottest part of our year with average high temps of 80° (27°C). We might get close on Fri & Sat and then it’s back to this cool damp pattern – or so they’re forecasting.
According to the Baranyi map n the paper above, Thule, Greenland sits at one of the places where it gets affected no matter what the polar/equatorial solar particle stuff is doing.
@ur momisugly Pamela Gray (19:15:13) :
Pamela Gray wrote: “However, in an unstable loopy jet stream pattern, the range of temps is bound to be greater than when the jet stream is stable.”
Yes, that is true, but what causes an “unstable loopy jet stream pattern”?
Answer: A weak jet stream.
And what causes a weak jet stream?
To my knowledge, and please correct me if I’m wrong, less energy of whatever source introduced into the world’s atmosphere.
Strong jet streams generally result in stable high pressure domes in the middle of the continental United States and with those high pressure domes — high temperatures.
Also, as an added thought, strong jet streams during Summer usually ride at a higher latitude dividing the warm air South of the jet stream and colder air North of the jet stream.
So a good measure of energy is the average latitude of the jet stream and its zonal quality. (Does it run straight across the latitude lines or is it loopy and unstable?)
I see at the side-bar that we’re about to say good by to our sunspot that caused such a stir just a few days ago…and so far…no replacement in sight.
I hope that isn’t the extent of the solar 24 cycle (just kidding).
Actually, should this minimum continue into the Fall — that will be the test — if bitter cold on the North American continent prevails next winter, as a possible result of a third winter with low solar activity, it will be very hard for the AGW supporters to keep it up any longer.
Although, they sure will try.
And Congress might just start to get “cold feet”, even Democrats in competitive districts come November 2010.
Leon Brozyna (22:38:26) :
Welcome to the stuck in LowHi club.
We have been stuck with Lows or Highs that defy forecast models for the past year and a half in the Pacific Northwest. And those winds. Summer is the only relief, and the last 2 days saw debris from trees all over the place as the stubborn high gave way to another stubborn low with stuck pressure gradients.
SSN 1024 did nothing to help matters, but it was nice to see.
Got to grab the sweater again. Feels like Fall.
CET for the UK seems to be down, and the data is hidden behind a ‘university researchers only’ firewall, but i found this site which offers a representative point sample.
http://www.stormtrack.co.uk/Pages/CET.aspx
Above average, but the striking thing this year was there have been hardly any days where the day’s average breaks the 95% historical range. Last genuine CET deviation year to date I saw was about +0.79, including the warm days at the start of this month.
Philip_B (21:15:31) :
Warmer sea surface temperatures mean the Earth’s climate is cooling.
Simplistically you can think of the Earth’s climate as a process of heat gain and retention by the oceans due high humidity greenhouse effect, then release to the atmosphere, transfer by weather over land and to high latitudes, where it is radiated out into space.
Spot on Philip. I have been working on solar heat retention in the oceans and found some interesting things out. I think part of the see-sawing of SST is due to the ocean oscillating between heat emittance and placidity. This will be modulated by regional cloud cover, but globally measurable net differences will show up when regional cloud cover in separate sensitive areas goes in and out of phase.
If the satellite altimetry is correct, heat must be retained in the oceans on longish timescales to account for the thermal component of the small sea level rise observed. the atmosphere-centric AGW crowd have glossed over this to some extent, because the source is primarily solar, the run of high amplitude, short minimum solar cycles we have had in the late C20th.
Conversely, we skeptics have glossed over it, because we dislike the ‘heat in the pipeline’ concept put forward by the co2 driven model.
In reality, ‘the heat in the pipeline’ should be seen for what it is. The thermal buffer which helps us through long solar minima, not an ever increasing threat caused by increasing co2. This is why David Archibald’s prediction for a -0.3C anomaly in may failed. He didn’t account for the oceans cushioning the fall.
The question is, how long the ocean battery will keep temperatures moderate if the sun doesn’t buck up with solar cycle 24.
I notice that a frost was recorded in Edmonton, Alberta on 1 July, according to Environment Canada (a minimum of -0.7 C in the early hours of 1 July).
From the same site, the extreme minimum temperature listed for Edmonton in July is +2.8 C, so presumably this is also a new record low for the month?
Just to add to my post at 00:30:01
We might be able to get some idea of how long the retained heat in the oceans will buffer falling temperatures at times of low solar activity. The two low cycles of the Dalton minimum saw a drop of around 0.7C from 1795-1820 in the Central England Temperature series. This followed a long period of generally high solar activity which would have seen a lot of oceanic heat retention. If solar cycles 24 and 25 follow a similar pattern, we might expect a similar fall in temperature. A 1C drop is equivalent to around 200 miles of latitude in agricultural terms, though deeper, later frosts will have an exaggerated effect on crops.
I recommend to our glorious leaders that we stop turning food into fuel for a few years and generate some surplus grain just in case.