Flashback: More from the “weather is not climate” department.
NOTE: These are news stories about unusual July weather in Argentina from 2007 which I thought might interest readers. Please note these stories are not from 2009.
Picture: snow falls over the obelisk, in the center of Buenos Aires. From Clarin.
Killer Cold Snap Grips South America
Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, has seen snow for the first time in 89 years, as a cold snap continues to grip several South American nations.
Temperatures plunged to -22C (-8F) in parts of Argentina’s province of Rio Negro, while snow fell on Buenos Aires for several hours on Monday.
wait for it….
From Treehugger:
Snow in Buenos Aires: Was it Global Warming?
“It does not have to do with climate change, though climate change could have cooperated somehow by increasing humidity”.
Teleconnection perhaps?
from the BBC:
Buenos Aires residents came out on the streets to see the snow
|
Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, has seen snow for the first time in 89 years, as a cold snap continues to grip several South American nations.
Temperatures plunged to -22C (-8F) in parts of Argentina’s province of Rio Negro, while snow fell on Buenos Aires for several hours on Monday.
Two deaths from exposure were reported in Argentina and one in Chile.
In Bolivia, heavy snowfall blocked the nation’s main motorway and forced the closure of several airports.
In Argentina, several provinces in the Andes have been placed under a storm alert, according to the national weather centre.
h/t to Ron de Haan
One of the most important cold spells to affect Southern Brazil in recent times brought record low temperatures, widespread and severe frost as well as snow to the region. On Thursday (July 12th), the state of Rio Grande do Sul was whitened by frost.
The freezing temperature was associated to the same air mass that prompted the first snowfall to the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 89 years. Temperature in the city of Bage, state of Rio Grande do Sul, fell to minus 3,8 degrees Celsius, the lowest since 1955. Nearby, inside Uruguay, the national low in Mercedes was minus 6,6 degrees. At least three Uruguayans died in consequence of the cold temperatures. On Wednesday (July 11th), Porto Alegre, the state capital of Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, had one of its lowest ever recorded daily highs under clear sky conditions. The high only reached 9 degrees. In the following morning, the city awoke with frost inside the urban heat island, a rare fact not observed since July 14th 2000. The low temperature of 0,3 degree was the lowest since July 14th 2000. In the green areas of southern Porto Alegre, a 1.5 million inhabitants city, frost was intense and even the water has frozen in the ground. At midmorning ice could still be seen over cars parked in the streets.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Poor Argentinian People!
Argentina has faced a series of disasters in last year:
1) March 2008: a massive peasant strike and uprising against the 50-60% taxes over agro-exportations
2) October 2008- until now: the country is badly hit by the global recession and financial crisis
3) January-March 2009: the worst drought in recent aregentinian history, nearly a million catlle died of stavation. Argentina may need for first time in history meat imports
4) May 2009 until now: Argentina is the worst hit country in the world by the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, whith a mortality rate over 5% the highest in the world, if this trend persists, millions of argentinians will die of viral influenza pneumonia.
5) July 2009: The present cold wave, that will surely made the pandemic situation worse, because the infection and death rates will increase because of the cold weather.
My solidarity with the Argentinian People, and shame on the current incompetent administration!
Rick (11:31:41) :
“not sure what the point of this is other than to show an old cold weather event. In that case it was cold at various times in the past few years here in Vancouver except when it wasn’t.”
Fascinating. I’m sure if you Team up with Dr Mann, the two of you can invent some new statistical method, and by smearing some temperature anomalies from nearby measurement sites in Maui and Oahu, you would be able to show consistent unprecedented warming in Vancouver even when it wasn’t.
My view is that the Metsul story should have been posted on top, cause’ the warmistas will use it against (us) just a personal view .. the global climate wars LOL…
@urederra
It was between Vittel and Colmar in Vosges mountains (NE of France) and it was only rain.
http://www.letour.fr/2009/TDF/LIVE/us/1300/videos.html
Looks like record cold in North Alabama tonight.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=35976
We call this the Christy/Spencer effect.
🙂
Frank Lansner (13:44:20) :
OT: Sealevel updated from Colerado university, here downloaded data in graphic:
Frank: Looking at your plot, I get the impression that you copied the new 2009 data and appended it to data for earlier years that you copied some time in the past. If so, you may wish to recopy the entire data set, going back to 1993, because Colorado has changed the prior numbers a bit as well as putting out the 2009 data. The revised graph, and polynomial, will be slightly different.
Commonsense, I agree with most of what you said about Argentina misfortune in the last 7 years of the present Kirchner family kingdom. But I beg to disagree about the “swine flu” pandemic. Figures given by our officials are made up (they make up the inflation index showing an inflation 20-30% of the real one).
Actually, the “pig flu” as we know it, has about 0,4% mortality, compared with 2-5% of the common flu we have every year. They count as people with the A1 flu (the pig one) all people who have some lines of fever and group them under the “pandemic” A1 flu label. We have in my city (1,3 million) only 9 deaths out of 3000 suspicious cases, and all of them were people with previous critical lung condition that would have died anyway even with a common cold.
Our previous national health minister (a lady with a degree in accounting!) resigned and the new minister is a corrupt one that two years ago was caught making up statistics on child mortality in his province (Tucumán) to prove his governor’s and party’s health policies were fine.
In Argentina nobody can trust any figure, number, statistic or claim made by any person in the government. We know that and laugh at politicians but—what else can we do? There is no way we can get rid of politicos by voting differently. It only aggravates the problem, as what they call here “democracy” is just the shortest path to “demagoguery” and the institution of a “tyranny of the majority” that always oppresses the minorities –that is, common people who work hard and only hopes a real terrible disease will kill all politicos in the country.
If I am allowed to say, Argentina (my country) is the best example of the ruling of Murphy’s Law: “If something can go wrong, IT WILL –but in the worst possible sequence of events.”
Nasif Nahle (12:28:37) :
”… and “the carbon dioxide, whether emitted by humans beings or not, is heated up by the energy transferred from the surface, but does not heat up anything…”.
The Warmist view is the sun (neglecting the infrared spectrum) radiates energy down through a transparent atmosphere with no transfer of energy to the greenhouse gases When the energy hits the earth, high level radiation in the UV and visible range is transformed into heat or infrared energy. The infrared energy is radiated up and on the way from the earth to outer-space the greenhouse gases absorb the infared energy and keep it from reaching outer-space. Then the COOLER atmosphere transfers this earth derived heat energy back to the WARMER earth raising the earth’s net temperature. Since the Second Law does not allow this with out work (a la heat pump) Rabett says the SUN is the driver (heat pump) so the second law is not violated.
This Warmist view neglects the excitation of CO2 electrons by direct sunlight. Some of the excitation energy must be from the sun. If we keep to the time sequence, during the day, the sun’s energy would have first priority since the energy goes sun-air-earth and then back to air. Only CO2 molecules not at a high energy state already would be available to be excited by energy radiated back from the earth. Second the amount of infrared energy from the sun is much greater than that from the earth. (the graphs shown by the Warmists change the scale on the earth radiated infrared energy so it looks the same as the sun’s instead of much less)
Let us look at nature:
At the same latitude the climate with a high humidity will be moderated compared to a desert. Very high day time temperatures followed by low night time temperatures are the norm in low humidity. This means that the action of the greenhouse gases is to SLOW the energy transfer from the sun. Moisture captures some of the incoming energy from the sun during the day thereby lowering the day time temperatures. “….Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly….At night, when the humidity is high, the atmosphere retains more heat, and nighttime temperatures stay somewhat high. On dry nights, however…., the atmosphere cools off rapidly.,,,” Straight from a Warmist paper the full quote is below.
“…Water vapor is the main reason for the greenhouse effect, in which certain gases in the atmosphere allow sunlight to pass through, but absorb heat released from the Earth (when sunlight strikes the Earth it changes from visible light to infrared radiation, or heat). Without this effect the Earth would be about 33°C cooler than it is at present (that is, 60°F cooler). Human-caused emissions, leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases in the atmosphere may accelerate the greenhouse effect. Water vapor absorbs heat and releases it slowly. At night, when the humidity is high, the atmosphere retains more heat, and nighttime temperatures stay somewhat high. On dry nights, however, with little water vapor to absorb heat, the atmosphere cools off rapidly….” http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ce-Cr/Climate-Moderator-Water-as-a.html
The fallacy is neglecting the role of sunlight in warming up greenhouse gases during the day and attributing the warming to black body radiation from the earth ONLY. In other words “greenhouse gas” interrupts the journey of some of the infrared energy from the sun to the earth during the day and then releases the energy at night. This model is consistent with the temperature moderation seen when the humidity is high. (College thesis anyone?)
Geez….! Snow every 89 years…. That’s as about as infrequent as Halley’s Comet!
The price of food is going to go through the roof.
Buy grain and make money.
I have noticed that daytime temperatures have not been reaching forecast highs. Usually during summer months the high is higher than forcasted.
(Denver Colorado)
Forecast models are indicating a huge polar air incursion in South America in the next few days. If the models prove to be correct, it will be one of the coldest events – not the coldest – in the region in recent memory, maybe decades. Here is the latest ECMWF model run to next Thursday.
http://www.metsul.com/__editor/filemanager/files/2008/europeu1707a.JPG
Temperature ranging from -8 to -10C in 850 hPa are quite rare to see in the Buenos Aires region.
Gail Combs (18:50:25) :
The Warmist view is the sun (neglecting the infrared spectrum) radiates energy down through a transparent atmosphere with no transfer of energy to the greenhouse gases When the energy hits the earth, high level radiation in the UV and visible range is transformed into heat or infrared energy. The infrared energy is radiated up and on the way from the earth to outer-space the greenhouse gases absorb the infared energy and keep it from reaching outer-space. Then the COOLER atmosphere transfers this earth derived heat energy back to the WARMER earth raising the earth’s net temperature. Since the Second Law does not allow this with out work (a la heat pump) Rabett says the SUN is the driver (heat pump) so the second law is not violated.
The second law is not violated for the system Sun-Earth. Nonetheless, as it is formulated by AGWists, it is violated for the system atmosphere-Surface.
This Warmist view neglects the excitation of CO2 electrons by direct sunlight. Some of the excitation energy must be from the sun. If we keep to the time sequence, during the day, the sun’s energy would have first priority since the energy goes sun-air-earth and then back to air. Only CO2 molecules not at a high energy state already would be available to be excited by energy radiated back from the earth. Second the amount of infrared energy from the sun is much greater than that from the earth. (the graphs shown by the Warmists change the scale on the earth radiated infrared energy so it looks the same as the sun’s instead of much less)
This is the best part of your explanation because it implies induced negative absorption given that photons at a given frequency interact with matter particles. During daytime, the solar photon stream is stronger than the surface photon stream, so the photons emitted due to negative absorption by the interaction between solar photons and matter particles follows the trajectory of the stronger stream, the solar photon stream in this case, and thus the energy is absorbed by the surface. The amplitude, wavelenght and frequency of the photons emitted back by the surface allow another photon stream weaker than the solar photon stream, i.e. the surface photon stream. Given that this photons interact with the air molecules whether they are or not excited, but instead they vibrate at the same frequency of the photons of the surface photon stream, the trajectory of the induced negative absorption of the air molecules is the same than the trajectory of the surface photon stream. This way, the Sun does not act as a “heat pump” during the energy transfer from the surface to the atmosphere and there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics. That’s what nature exhibits and there is no need of implausible invented mechanisms like “climate loops” and Rabett’s “solar heat pumps”.
Gail Combs (18:50:25):
The fallacy is neglecting the role of sunlight in warming up greenhouse gases during the day and attributing the warming to black body radiation from the earth ONLY. In other words “greenhouse gas” interrupts the journey of some of the infrared energy from the sun to the earth during the day and then releases the energy at night. This model is consistent with the temperature moderation seen when the humidity is high. (College thesis anyone?)
Indeed. AGWists are compelled to neglect the role of the Sun on Earth’s climate because they are urged to validate their fallacies. The first obstacle to their idea is the Medieval Warming Period, so they have tried to erase that period.
Second, the main source of energy for the climate, the Sun, is hindrance to their ideas, so they are trying to unlink the Sun from our planet. They say that the carbon dioxide heats up the Earth when the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy. As you have said, the Sun heats up the surface and the surface heats up the atmosphere.
Third, those enormous concentrations of carbon dioxide present during geological eras when the Earth was undergoing frosty temperatures, and vice versa, constitute a foremost stagger for them, so they are picking up small periods from the geological timescale for attempting to mislead the public through masking their ideas with real observations.
Finally, the most efficient “greenhouse” gas is, undeniably, water vapor; however, AGWists turn a blind eye for not including strongly the water vapor in their models adducing that its concentration is highly variable. That’s an evasive argument, of course.
It seems AGW proponents are trying to rewrite science, or to construct a new pseudoscience, with solipsist deconstructive arguments.
Stephen Wilde: At last someone else agrees with me about the insidious nature of the government funded propaganda campaign. Whilst indeed it was a working document, it shows quite plainly the thinking that has driven the Tyndall Centre since its inception. In November 2007, I had a paper published in Energy and Environment based on the document. Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 6, pp. 805-813, November 2007. Abstract here: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=19047320
An earlier parent document with some of the content can be found here: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/Spinning%20temperature%20out%20of%20control.pdf
The campaign about aviation emissions started with them and they are widely quoted by the aptly named Plain Stupid activist group. The idea of individual carbon credits with your own swipe card started life with them. They have been working closely with NGO’s since their inception, especially Greenpeace and FoE.
Try this one as well:
Tyndall Centre Working Paper 72: Does tomorrow ever come? Disaster narrative and public perceptions of climate change
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/working_papers/wp72_summary.shtml
· The general public garners most of its knowledge about science from the mass media (Nelkin, 1987; Wilson, 1995). Therefore the role of the media is significant in the public’s cognition and perception of climate change issues.
· The ways in which television, radio and newspapers communicate complicated issues of science, technology and politics to the public has reached a critical point in post-industrial society as the media has become highly influential and immensely powerful (Wahlberg, 2000, Weingart, 2003). Its sway over the public psyche is evident in all sectors with public understanding of science in particular being communicated by media eager for topical news.
· The media play an important role in reporting often the most shocking and attention grabbing climate change headlines to lay audiences.
· Science and the media tend to inhabit a grey or undefined region within the socio-political psyche, a void in which the metrics of scientific process are often lost in translation from academic findings to news headline.
· Moser and Dilling (2004: p.41) advocate the use of more relevant or ‘trusted messengers’ in order to improve credibility and legitimacy in the communication of climate change to lay audiences. They suggest that pioneering industry leaders will appear more legitimate or relevant to industry audiences, religious leaders more legitimate in providing the moral argument and (in the case of climate change) even using the skills of artists, story-tellers and musicians to popularise what is seen by many as a ‘dry’ scientific matter, as a “deeply human affair”.
All sound familiar?
The Institute for Public Policy Research, one of the UK government’s favourite think tanks, had this advice for public agencies interfacing with the public in August 2006:
“Treating climate change as beyond argument
..it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won.
This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective.
The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.
The certainty of the Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality.”
And it’s all about “The Science” isn’t it?
I would never think it snows there. It always seems warm. Snow is a mess to drive in. I rather have warm weather all year long.
If one were to post “Golden Coldies,” we could post Feb. 1934 in NYC when it got to -15 Fahrenheit.
More to the point for Buenos Aires, check out how cold it’s supposed to get there this week. The Weather Underground is predicting SNOW throughout much of the pampas, along with very heavy drought-busting rain (and unusual cold) in the Federal District. Could history repeat itself?
It’s official, the temperature in my area of Alabama set a record low last night, one that is 7 degrees below the average and one degree below the previous record.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/K8A0/2009/7/19/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
Hmmm….. Didn’t hear about this anywhere!
Stephen Wilde (10:55:25) :
Tyndall would have a fit.
I notice a lot of the founder members of the organisation are from the University of East Anglia.
Now who do we know from there who is behind HADcru?
Three nights of record low temperatures at the KCI airport, supposedly an official temperature site, although it doesn’t show up in any of the climate network websites. Can anybody tie all of these monitoring stations/official temperature sites/ etc., together?
tallbloke (13:33:59)
I notice a lot of the founder members of the organisation are from the University of East Anglia.
Now who do we know from there who is behind HADcru?
Absolutely right. University of East Anglia is a network centre for several climate institutes, including Tyndall and the Climate Reseach Unit: http://www.uea.ac.uk/zicer/. This is how consensus works, you set up a new institute every few months, using mostly the same staff, the same data and the same agenda and you have yet another scientific body adding their weight to the consensus.
The current Tyndall Director of Strategy and chief scientific advisor to DEFRA is Bob Watson, ex IPCC chairman before Pachauri, former Chief Scientist and Director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) at the World Bank. Before the World Bank, he was Associate Director for Environment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President in the Clinton/Gore White House. Prior to that he was Director of the Science Division and Chief Scientist for the Office of Mission to Planet Earth at NASA.
Hadley itself is part of the Met office and under the control of the MoD.
This is how certain Hadley were about global warming in 2005, just before the Exeter Conference on Dangerous Climate Change:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/index.html (I can no longer find this on the Hadley site but I do have the pdf)
Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre, January 2005
What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change, in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains open to debate
Once we decide what degree of (for example) temperature rise the world can tolerate, we then have to estimate what greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to, and how quickly they should be allowed to change. These are very uncertain because we do not know exactly how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases
The next stage is to calculate what emissions of greenhouse gases would be allowable, in order to keep below the limit of greenhouse gas concentrations. This is even more uncertain, thanks to our imperfect understanding of the carbon cycle (and chemical cycles) and how this feeds back into the climate system
The science is settled…..
We will be selling fur coats at mardi Gras and Carnival.
@Anthony
There seems to be a bit of confusion here (see e.g. Billy Bob above). Both articles are from 2007. The Metsul article is marked as “Alexandre Amaral de Aguiar – 15/07/2007 19:04:21″ at the bottom of the page, the date in the top right corner is the current date – yes, it’s confusing. Also note
Whatever may be brewing in Argentina/Brazil (see Eugenio Hackbart – Brazil (20:49:56)) right now, it is covered in none of your featured articles.
A current 36-hour forecast says today 63°F high, tonight 48°F low, tomorrow 58°F high.
REPLY: Yes this was something that caught my eye that was published along with three other scheduled articles before I left on a cross country flight Saturday. Being with the same July timeframe, it seemed like a good recap. I regret that a combination of lack of time and a mistake in setting up the publishing time put this online before I had a chance to get back to finishing it.
I’ve made a change right above the first photo to make it clearer that these are both from 2007. If somebody still gets confused, not much I can do to help them. – A
Ex head of Tyndall Centre speaks out:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/founding-director-of-the-tyndall-centre-for-climate-change-time-to-ditch-consensus/
John Tyndall himself said this in his preface to his book on acoustics:
“The subject is treated experimentally throughout, and I have endeavoured so to place each experiment before the reader that he should realise it as an actual operation.”
And this about the seperation of science and religion:
“religious sentiment should not be permitted to intrude on the region of knowledge, over which it holds no command”
1912, 1917, and now 2009 have seen unusual cold events during periods of unusually low solar activity.
Just a coincidence? I dunno.