From NOAA/NCDC
The July 2009 temperature for the contiguous United States was below the long-term average, based on records going back to 1895, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
The average July temperature of 73.5 degrees F was 0.8 degrees F below the 20th century average. Precipitation across the contiguous United States in July averaged 2.90 inches, which is 0.14 inches above the 1901-2000 average.
U.S. Temperature Highlights
Click for high resolution map (Credit: NOAA)
- An abnormally strong, persistent upper-level pattern produced more than 400 record low minimum temperatures and 1,300 record low maximum temperatures (lowest high temperature) across the nine-state area that make up the Central region.
- Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania experienced their coolest July on record. Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan each had their second coolest July on record, while Minnesota and Tennessee had their third coolest July on record.
- Death Valley, Calif., set a new monthly average maximum temperature at 121.3 degrees F. Temperatures in Death Valley reached 120 degrees F or higher for 22 days, beating the old record of 19 days.
- Several western locations recorded their all-time warmest July. Seattle-Tacoma Airport had an average July temperature of 69.5 degrees F, which was 4.2 degrees F above average. Seattle’s high temperature of 103 degrees F on July 29 is an all-time record. Alaska posted its second warmest July, Arizona had its third warmest, while New Mexico and Washington had their ninth warmest.
- Based on NOAA’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index, the contiguous U.S. temperature-related energy demand was 13.3 percent below average in July. Much of this can be attributed to cooler-than-average conditions in the heavily-populated Northeast.
In a related note, UAH has produced this map which not only shows a cooler than normal eastern USA,but many other cool spots around the globe. Oddly, Antarctica appears to be the major contributor to above normal temperatures and the 0.41C global temperature anomaly jump in July 2009.
Goodness me! How odd that Antarctica shows up so much warmer.[/sarc]
Richard111 (22:24:49) :
Goodness me! How odd that Antarctica shows up so much warmer.[/sarc]
That’s because Steig, Mann and company fudged the results. Of course you already knew that!
Wait, its winter in Antarctica, that means, its a proverbial heat wave down there… I would expect that we should be monitoring for a significant drop or at least a slow down, in the Ice growth with heat records like that.
O/T but temperatures at the North Pole seem to be dropping.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/
“. . . 0.8 degrees F below the 20th century average.”
So, this means Hansen et. al. 1998 was remarkably accurate since his benchmark was 1951-1980, not the entire century, right? [. . . sarc off.]
Richard: noticed as well.. also the ice extent curve is taking a sharp turn to the right
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice_area.png
could it be that the ice melt has stopped? (doubtful.. but if so the warmistas will lose another icon)…
So it’s been a cold July – even with biased (to the high side) temperature readings.
Antarctica just looks wrong.
Richard111 (22:54:02) : “O/T but temperatures at the North Pole seem to be dropping.”
The Danes think so too.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The daily mean temp for the high Arctic has dropped below freezing several weeks early this year compared to the 1958 – 2002 average.
The Statewide Ranks – whatever the numbers mean – show the State of Washington at ‘105’ as “much above normal” and in league with Antarctica to off-set run-away global cooling. We have now cooled off. Not that any of this is extremely important.
That “. . . the contiguous U.S. temperature-related energy demand was 13.3 percent below average in July”, however, would seem to be good news. This ought to provide an almost immediate $$ stimulus for everyone in the blue part of the map. Back-to-school sales in August may be better than anticipated and, most importantly, our fickle congress-folk may better understand the difference for their constituents between lower energy costs and higher energy – tax and trade – costs. I think this is called a teachable moment.
We have had a long period of low Southern Hemisphere temperatures and warm Northern Hemisphere temperatures. That seems to be changing. Antarctic sea ice is off the record levels it had been the past two years whole Arctic ice seems to be making a nice recovery from 2007 when much of the Arctic ice cover was blown into the Atlantic by unusual wind patterns.
It doesn’t look as if the Northwest Passage is going to open this year either. And while the Arctic ice cap continues to recover, we continue to read how dire things are.
As Henrik Svensmark pointed out, Antarctic temperatures tend to go the opposite way to the rest of the world. His explanation is that clouds are less reflective than the Antarctic snow and ice, hence when albedo decreases globally and thus heats the planet, Antarctica becomes more reflective so cools down. And vice versa. Since global cloud cover has started increasing and we are now in a global cooling phase, we can expect Antarctica to become warmer.
The sad thing about this is that warming alarmists will still have something to grab onto.
When will all of this temperature chasing end? I realize the need to counter the Lefts barrage of global warming rhetoric but sooner or later common sense has to kick in. Doesn’t it?
I think that we need to start prefacing all of our arguments against the Anthropogenic warmists with the words of President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech. As the left in the past has used his words in their goal of pacifism regarding the “industrial-military complex”, I think that it is time to start using his words from the same speech concerning science and the possibility of that federally funded community overcoming the sensibilities of our nation.
Here is the quote from his speech:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
I’ve been playing around with GIStemp and with “Global Average Temperature” calculation issues for a while now. This posting is full of references to the average temperature. The good news is that the US temperature series is fairly complete, so this is probably a decent conclusion.
The sidebar is that the world temperature series is very spotty. We start with ONE thermometer in 1701, ramp up to 9000+, then drop to a few thousand today. IMHO, the side effect of this on the temperature record is what we call “AGW”. I think I’ve pretty much showed that there is no AGW if you hold the number of thermometers relatively constant (with using the 3000 longest lived thermometers with the most records):
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/co2-takes-summers-off/
and the short lived thermometers seem to be largely in warm places and that seems to be the reason we have “global warming”: adding thermometers in places like Brazil and Australia:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/well-theres-your-global-warming-problem/
But I’m still left with a ‘sour taste’ in the mouth over the whole issue of a “global average temperature”. I call the GAT a “global average of thermometers” since I think that is more accurate… but I’m still not very sure just exactly what does it mean to average a bunch of thermometers together over time and over land…
I *think* that the average of thermometers ought to be lower in cold times and higher in warm times, but I’m just not comfortable calling it a temperature.
The thing I’ve found is that the “global average temperature” is more a function of where you’ve stuck the thermometers than it is a function of changes in the earth systems (or of GIStemp processing – but more on that in future postings…) so I’m left wondering about this article:
Where in the USA has NOAA stuck Carmen Sandiego’s thermometers?
It really is, at it’s core, a question of the number, quality, and placement of all the thermometers. Put more in, oh, Saudi Arabia, and the global average temperature goes up. Put more on frozen mountain tops and it goes down.
It really is that simple.
I just got back from Antarctica.
There are palm trees growing on the beach –
And lovely condos going up everywhere.
It’s the next Cozumel.
I just finally looked at the UAH map. They say that the west coast of the USA was warm (if I can interpret beige as warm). I’m sorry, but this has been the coldest da..rned summer in the SF Bay Area in 30+ years of my living here.
If they are calling this warm, or even just normal, I’m calling Bull Shi…eist on their whole map. I’ve finally got some tomatoes, but the green beans are still sulking and the cool season plants are thrilled. This is NOT a warm summer in the South Bay…
From a blog on 8 August by a pair of Royal Marines attempting the Northwest Passage:
Today’s entry shows they are still there waiting for the ice to clear. A Southeast wind would blow the ice out into open water. Today’s entry says they are expecting a NW wind over the next few days which might pack more ice into the passage (they are going from West to East).
The Northwest Passage might not clear at all this year.
gtrip (23:16:13) : (quoting Ike)
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.
gtrip, you’ve put me close to tears…
But this is one ‘solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop’ that hopes to show that there is still room in the America of today for a little bit of come uppance for the “task force” of government lackies.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/agw-is-a-thermometer-count-artifact/
Pieter F (23:10:31) :
The daily mean temp for the high Arctic has dropped below freezing several weeks early this year compared to the 1958 – 2002 average.
Comparing this years temps to a mean average is stoopid…and that’s all I got to say about that.
“When will all of this temperature chasing end? ”
When there is no longer a bill under consideration in the US Congress.
While in Europe, the Met Office staff get a large bonus for their ever-so accurate forecasting?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205440/Its-raining-bonuses-Met-Office-despite-spate-inaccurate-predictions.html
Or is that a bonus for towing the government’s AGW line?
.
Bearing in mind the disproprtionate number of thermometers in the States relative to its actual size what percentage of the global temperature change does it represent? A US .8 decrease somehow translates into a worldwide plus .4 worldwide which sems unlikely.
Tonyb
>>>Goodness me! How odd that Antarctica shows up
>>>so much warmer.
Again, the warmer spots are always in the areas where nobody can refute the data.
.
>>>Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect
>>>, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and
>>>opposite danger that public policy could itself become
>>>the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Hasn’t the opposite of this occurred? The scientific elite have been captured by the government and their all-important purse strings?
.
>>>The daily mean temp for the high Arctic has dropped
>>>below freezing several weeks early this year compared
>>>to the 1958 – 2002 average.
And ice-extent stabilising?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
.
Meanwhile the UK government and the BBC continue their warmist crusade while gleefully ignoring the facts.
We are being advised of the coming necessity to turn our gardens into allotments to grow vegetables in order ensure food security. I would advise the government to return all the arable acreage they hijacked for biofuel production back to food production.
We will also face a chronic water shortage in the future. Anyone living with the British climate will understand that the only chronic shortage we are facing is political reality…
July is one of the coldest months in Antarctica. What is the reason for this sudden jump in the local temperature anomaly?
Maybe Steig and his colleagues just have signed an agreement with the leaders of several Emperor Penguin colonies to raise local temperatures by as much as possible…
I’ve posted the July OI.v2 SST anomaly data. Global SST anomalies dropped slightly in July to +0.28 deg C:
http://i25.tinypic.com/24g7kwj.png
Monthly NINO3.4 SST anomalies continued to rise to +0.86 deg C.
http://i29.tinypic.com/11w3bz7.png
The weekly NINO3.4 SST anomalies have dropped a small amount over the past few weeks.
http://i29.tinypic.com/2w6vrk3.png
The rest of the ocean basins and hemispheres are here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/08/july-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html
The antarctic anomalies demonstrate the misleading possibilities of the “anomalies” color maps.
It is winter there and the “normal demperatures are below -60C. To have an anomaly of 7.5C means that the temperatures are there now -52.5C . If you spit, it still freezes in the air. There is no sun at this time of the year so the only heat input can be by convection or by geothermal sources. Convection means that the -60C air has migrated north to change the temperatures there by a few degrees colder ( temperatures and anomalies are not propagated linearly ).
In the case of land-based temperature records the penguins established their colonies next to the Stevenson screens (as they have promised in their agreement with Steig).
Re: gtrip (23:16:13)
Good call.
@ Richard 111
Now is the winter of my discontent.
The link was good but contained within this is better.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/webphotos/noaa1.jpg
Mr Watts
I see a measuring station in the distance.
To understand the non linearity of temperature and anomaly measures in geographic distributions, follow this gedanken experiment:
Have a kitchen at 20C
Light the electric stove to boil something. The anomaly in the pot is +80C.
The anomaly in the room might go to 0.1C, growing with time.
Other:
Take the freezer at -25C. Open it. It gets a positive anomaly of +5C the more the longer you leave the door open.
The room might go from 20C to 19.9C, maybe, a negative anomaly of 0.1C.
So, volumes, density, convection etc have to be taken into account before any sense can be made of temperature anomalies even in a simple kitchen.
Th high LT’s around Antarctica indicate to me that this is the little studied southern ocean is currently shedding a lot of heat during southern hemisphere winter.
This is a strong indicator of background cooling, despite the current mid latitude mild conditions over the oceans.
Let me be the 1st to send an overdue chill down the back of all those smug warmists:
A warmer than normal Antarctic in the dead of winter is not good news.
It means increased precipitation which, coupled with a colder Northern Hemisphere, that ocean levels are going to take a big hit.
Sea levels plunge. The warming alarmists are going to look dumber than dirt.:
Playtime is over.
Hurry up with the plans to deepen the Suez and Panama Canals.
Now that will put one heck of a damper on Global Trade.
It will also regionalize the balance of power.
Mike Jonas (23:14:55) :
The warmists are in for a rude awakening.
Thier worst nightmare is not what they have imagined.
It’s having the world turn reddened eyes toward you and the bony finger is extended.
I see the bright red for Washington state.
Just across the border in Vancouver, BC, we hit the highest temperature EVER recorded in late July. It was dreadful. But thank goodness: The furnace has abruptly morphed into a freezer. Temps quickly plunged to less than HALF of what they were. Such relief. Rainy +15C makes for MUCH clearer thinking and far more comfortable outdoor rec. Even Yellowknife (Northwest Territories) was worse off today: 8 degrees warmer. Looking forward to a cool & rainy fall.
Only weather, but yet another sign natural global cooling.
I have 2 questions:
1. If one factors in the poor siting of weather stations, would this not mean that July was actually colder than anything this country has seen in a long time?
2. Has Al Gore been preaching GW near Chicago lately?
UAH chart puzles me. July sea ice down there, though there was a dip, appears strong.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
And Unisys has consistently shown it’s cool around Antarctica. Much like today’s chart:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
UK Sceptic (01:07:13) : We will also face a chronic water shortage in the future. Anyone living with the British climate will understand that the only chronic shortage we are facing is political reality…
Pardon? Water shortage? In a country surrounded by seas when desalinization is cheaper than a water pipe from the mountains 100 miles away? Water shortage, when the last time “mum” was “home” it rained every day except July 9, I think it was? (It was a long summer, from August 3 to the 5th 😉 I think she said…)
I live in one of the “darkest blue” states. So far, only a few days have felt like summer (mainly the last few). Otherwise, more like early fall.
In other words, the local lack of heat is very noticeable. Sincerely, I’ll take global warming any day. But, I imagine the “warming” trend will be flat lined for the next decade or so — we’ll see in 2020 if that is true — meantime, ups and downs.
We need to stop with the weather reports already…it makes us look stoopid…Focus on the farmers and the increase of plant life…it is happening as we post.
Paul Vaughan (01:22:45) :
Re: gtrip (23:16:13)
Good call.
Thank you….And to the point…Oh how I wish science would return to such simplicity….
Jackson TN had its coolest July ever recorded. Details are here: http://jacksonweather.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/july-2009-jacksons-coolest-july-on-record/
Our tomatoes and potatos just got hit with LATE BLIGHT yesterday. We are in the Poconos of Northeast PA. Most of the U. S. East Coast has been hit with this.
This has destroyed most of both crops.
This is the same blight that caused the Irish potato famine of the early 1800’s – – which also coincided with a deep solar minimum like the one we are experiencing now.
E.M.Smith (02:35:07)
“Pardon? Water shortage? In a country surrounded by seas when desalinization is cheaper than a water pipe from the mountains 100 miles away?”
Here in Florida, USA we have a state with ocean on three sides, a major river, and the fact that the state is a swap. Dig 10 feet in my back yard and you will get wet. We are told we have a “water shortage”.
Go figure.
This is not a surprise.
Can anyone confirm the blub I saw on Icecap that indicated Antarctica had the coldest average July temp recorded?
I am nothing more than a Jafo, just another freaking observer. And here is my observation. I think that that dudes hypothesis about the sun being a shrunken star is (for a lack of a better term) right on. I wish that I knew his name so as to give him credit but I just normally absorb information and log it in and don’t concern myself where it came from.
He proved in his theory that the sun has a solid core and that the energy around it is akin to the atmosphere to our planet….Its energy is like our cloud system and comes from within. It is not influenced by extraterrestrial forces.
He claimed that the solar spots/flares are just natural occurrences that happen during its life cycle (albeit a very long life cycle). And that the lull that we are seeing now is hppening because the center mass is cycling into an adjustment phase that is disrupting the outer surface of Sol. It is now readjusting itself into the proper place that natural science (or God) said it should be in. At the same time, the gravitational force (no one out there can explain that can you?), has lessoned on our planet and we are starting to see the effects in the earthquakes that are happening. They are happening around the major plates between the americas and asian landmass. As the solar forces decrease our earth will shift. Opposite from the theory that an active sunn predicts earthly movements.
I see the pacific plate shifting/spinning (counterclockwise) because of the lack of solar gravitational forcing on our planet (which also means a shift away from our solar orbit), almost like one would back a person battling in a game of indian wrestling. Something has to give.
And if I am wrong, so be it….No harm no foul right????? But if you are so inclined, please send $$$$’s.
Jimmy Haigh (23:09:14) :
So it’s been a cold July – even with biased (to the high side) temperature readings.
Antarctica just looks wrong.
Antarctica just looks damn cold – well Dome Argus anyway – just hit below -75C again:
http://www.aad.gov.au/weather/aws/dome-a/index.html
Regards from your old home town, where it is about 15C and has just started to rain.
Yet another example of coolist alarmism. The potato famine started in 1845, the same year as the peak of the solar maxima. There was no deep solar minimum in the 1840’s at all! The fungus responsible Phytophthora infestans was probably introduced to Ireland in 1844 from South America.
Fools the lot of you, clearly this is just weather and not climate!! Climate is when it gets warm and weather is when it gets cold – you silly silly warmists cherry picking the data once again! Just look at all that lovely stiegian red warming around the southern latitudes! See that – now BELIEVE!
As for the Arctic – don’t you know it’s not about extent – it’s all about multiyear ice and thickness as measured using the now standard measure of carlinprobes using randomly predetermined points.
(sarc off/)
I have read that the South Pole had a record cold July!
see bottom of article below from Joseph D’Aleo from ICECAP website
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/big_apples_cold_summer/
That does not jive with the satellite record for Antarctica. “Watts” up with that???
I got on NOAA’s site and tried to find their prediction for July 2009. But couldn’t find anything. Can anybody find it?
Sounds lovely to me. I have never understood why anyone thinks it’s so important to have polar ice caps. Without them we’d have easier transit across the north, and a whole new continent to explore and settle in the south. Sure, sea levels would rise some, but I’ll bet we’d gain a lot more land than we’d lose.
Where is it written that our present Earthly climate is the optimum?
/Mr Lynn
“”Stacey (01:23:35) :
The link was good but contained within this is better.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/webphotos/noaa1.jpg“”
Looks like the comera has fallen over. 🙂
Sheesh… how’d I do that! cam, cam, camera (DW insists on talking while…)
E.M.Smith (02:35:07) : wrote:
>> UK Sceptic (01:07:13) : We will also face a chronic water shortage in the
>> future. Anyone living with the British climate will understand that the only
>>chronic shortage we are facing is political reality…
>>Pardon? Water shortage? In a country surrounded by seas when
>>desalinization is cheaper than a water pipe from the mountains 100 miles
>>away? Water shortage, when the last time “mum” was “home” it rained every
>>day except July 9, I think it was? (It was a long summer, from August 3 to the
>>5th 😉 I think she said…
The UK government made these dire predictions (water and food shortage etc) based on met office data. The same met off that predicts “Barbeque Summer” and can’t even manage to get a five day forecast right. Perhaps they need to have some windows installed, or even go out side and look.
We’ve had a summer full of news about Global Warming, how It’ll change the country by 2050, and how local councils should prepare. The best way to prepare is to ignore it and buy lots of road grit for the winter.
If it gets any drier this summer, I’ll need a jet ski and scuba gear.
If we maintain a warm Antartica for a few months then It will be interesting in see what happens to the southern vortex and the flow on to SOI. Perhaps we will return to conditions similar to the 1970’s when the vortex was weaker and Antartica was also warmer ?
To John F. Hultquist:
I would love to live in a world where politicians are able to put two and two together and come up with four. But in the real world, politicians have their own agenda and when you dare to speak out against their agenda, they call you brownshirts, a reference to the Nazis. The irony is the politicians are more like Nazis because they seek to silence dissenters by force and have open contempt for a particular group of people.
To UK Sceptic:
It is very sad when people seem to forget that plants don’t like cold weather but love warm weather. You are told to grow more food because food will be more scarce in a world in which the conditions are more favorable for plant growth. Some people seem to forget the lessons I learned in early grade school science class. It is very sad that the BBC knows less about plants than a 10 year old.
Richard111 (05:16:00) : “Looks like the comera has fallen over.”
Dyam! Just when I think I have picked up another nice technical term or instrument, Richard, you follow on with a disclaimer…
UK Sceptic (01:07:13) : We will also face a chronic water shortage in the future
Big chief says:” Sun heat water, water make cloud, cloud raining, water come, You being Fool not know”
Global warming may be incovenient, but for a real disaster try global cooling. GW? Bring it on, we can handle it and still prosper.
Paul Vaughan (02:01:35) wrote (in part):
…..in Vancouver, BC, we hit the highest temperature EVER recorded in late July….. Temps quickly plunged to less than HALF of what they were.
Paul, sorry to sound like a correcting teacher, but a drop from 30°C to 15°C is really a drop on the absolute scale of 303K to 288K. The number 15 may be half of 30, but it isn’t half on the celsius temperature scale. You have to use the absolute scale.
And to continue the correcting mood, it’s TOE the line, not TOW.
It’s yet another grey and damp day here in New Brunswick. Enough to put anyone in a bad mood. I’m still waiting for flowers to appear on my tomato plants. (A tip for gardeners is that you can grow tomato plants in pots and take them indoors for the winter. They will continue to produce fruit, albeit smaller, through the winter if the plants are kept warm and get whatever sun can be gleaned. And the plants will continue to produce fruit through the following summer…..)
IanM
Paul Vaughan (02:01:35) :
I see the bright red for Washington state.
Just across the border in Vancouver, BC, we hit the highest temperature EVER recorded in late July. It was dreadful. But thank goodness: The furnace has abruptly morphed into a freezer. Temps quickly plunged to less than HALF of what they were. Such relief. Rainy +15C makes for MUCH clearer thinking and far more comfortable outdoor rec. Even Yellowknife (Northwest Territories) was worse off today: 8 degrees warmer. Looking forward to a cool & rainy fall.
————-
Paul, I live in BC, too. I am struck by how querulous many of my compatriots are when we have weather; which is most of the time. Contrary to popular perception, playing tennis at 34C is no harder than playing at 15C, you just sweat more.
I’m not as convinced as you are that your thinking is clearer now that it has cooled down; your idea that 288 kelvin is less than half of 309 kelvin belies your assertion.
I will be whining when it’s cool and rainy. I bet you will be too!
Gtrip, relax. Folks always like to speculate and ruminate on the weather. Somehow it feels like one has some “control”; we also like to inform each other about what it’s like in different, specific, areas of Earth. And weather turns into climate. Amazing that.
Bob Tisdale (01:14:45) :
“I’ve posted the July OI.v2 SST anomaly data. Global SST anomalies dropped slightly in July to +0.28 deg C:
http://i25.tinypic.com/24g7kwj.png”
Always read your research and am very grateful. Always have a question. Do we know that SSTs are not tampered with like land temperatures– some are tortured, often out of all recognition? Are there checks on the data that can be trusted?
E.M.Smith (23:30:32) :
I just finally looked at the UAH map. They say that the west coast of the USA was warm (if I can interpret beige as warm). I’m sorry, but this has been the coldest da..rned summer in the SF Bay Area in 30+ years of my living here.
If they are calling this warm, or even just normal, I’m calling Bull Shi…eist on their whole map. I’ve finally got some tomatoes, but the green beans are still sulking and the cool season plants are thrilled. This is NOT a warm summer in the South Bay…
Those “statewide” maps are often not very accurate in depicting how temperatures actually vary by climate regions WITHIN a state. The climate division web site is not updated for July yet, but here’s a map for June:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/tmp/climdiv/cd74.94.216.225.222.7.42.3.prcp.png
Love your site, but I have one complaint. When you put an image in your post, can you please verify that it’s either readable, or that we are able to click it to go to a larger, readable image please?
For example, I have no idea what the legend says in that first image. It looks like “1=Celcius, 115=Alamcat”. I can’t imagine what that could possibly mean.
Thanks!
I know we all love anecdotal evidence of the weak summer so here’s my offering.
It’s definitely been a ‘cool’ summer here in central New Jersey. We’ve not hit 100F at all and only one or two 90F days. We should have hit 90F almost every day since midsummer. I’m not complaining though, it’s been great weather for kayaking. I love to kayak the local rivers. I do yearn for something differnt though.
One item on my bukkit list is to take a guided kayak tour in Alaska or British Columbia. Financial and family pressures prevent that from happening right now so I live vicariously by reading the web-sites of companies that offer such tours. Here’s one entry from Uncommon Adventures, posted July 28, talking about a trip on Lake Superior:
http://uncommonadv.com/blog/?p=56
Quote:
Dave Nicosia (04:57:14) :
I have read that the South Pole had a record cold July!
…That does not jive with the satellite record for Antarctica. “Watts” up with that???
That is the well know problem NOAA has with color ink jet printing:There is some software or printing hardware which needs to be fixed up, specially with the red ink…
OT but perhaps of interest
A man whose ideas wouldn’t have passed muster for a minute 20 years ago is now nature mag’s eco-warrior hero
http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/lovelock/
I have nothing to say – left speechless by the egotistical tangle of hypocrisy, ambiguity and contradiction!
It’s from Nature’s “Fear and Loathing in Copenhagen” portal
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/roadtocopenhagen/index.html
Praise the Lord and pass the valium
OT: Have you noticed that “Anthony’s Effect” did not work this time on the Sun?
It has surpassed the 30 days line.
Dave Nicosia,
The south pole is one point only, and not an entire continent, is it not?
Right now two points in Antarctica are pretty darn cold.
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/antarctica%20environment/weather.htm
Nother OT sorry!
Financial Times reports Bjorn Lomborg jumping ship to the AGW boat
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ebdb666-82a5-11de-ab4a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
But reading between the lines it sounds not all that unlike his post from WUWT a year ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/22/the-green-inquisition/#more-1781
E.M.Smith (02:35:07) : questions UK Sceptic (01:07:13) :’s assertion that we are told by our government we will have a water shortage in the UK. […which UK Sceptic rebutted with “Anyone living with the British climate will understand that the only chronic shortage we are facing is political reality…”]
It might help to remember that in the UK a water shortage is defined as any two consecutive news cycles without heavy rainfall.
A UK agricultural consultant, ADAS, reports that it is the slowest start to the harvest for 6 years of the crops oilseed rape and winter barley in the UK due to the wet weather in July.
pyromancer76: “Do we know that SSTs are not tampered with like land temperatures– some are tortured, often out of all recognition? Are there checks on the data that can be trusted?”
There is no way to know if recent SST data is “tampered with” and no reason to believe it is.
Using the KNMI Climate Explorer you could run comparison tests from beginning to end of HADSST2, HADISST, ERSST.v2, ERSST.v3, and Kaplan datasets, and compare them to the ICOADS dataset, upon which they’re all based. Those responsible for creating the datasets at NOAA and the Hadley Centre have published papers on the techniques they use for smoothing and infilling missing data. And there are differences.
I found a 1998 step change in the Hadley Centre SST data that appears to be based on their change in “suppliers”.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/step-change-in-hadsst-data-after-199798.html
The “curiosity” that’s common to all long-term temperature datasets–that is, they always seem to be adjusted so that trends increase or better match the models when new or updated datasets are released–well, that curiosity exists in the SST data as well. I posted on it here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/recent-differences-between-giss-and.html
and here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/update-of-recent-differences-between.html
Steve McIntyre also posted about it here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6038
The OI.v2 that I post monthly is satellite-based SST data. It is also adjusted. Those satellites can’t do their magic through clouds so the satellite data is supplemented with buoy and ship data. The satellites are also known to create warm biases at high latitudes, so they’re adjusted downward.
Do those satellites have drift problems? Dunno.
Huh. I’ve chimed in several times here, commenting about the cooler weather in Arkansas. I didn’t need the weatherman nor a thermometer to tell me either. Y’all, we recently had a surge into the 90’s and people were rejoicing. Yes, you heard me. People were excited that the temps went back up into the 90’s. It was obvious at that point that people are a bit confused with the weather. They’re hearing all the AGW fear-mongering, but they’re getting unseasonably cool weather. The television is lying to them and it’s causing some sort of weird mental condition in a lot of people. The entire establishment seems on the verge of losing all credibility. It’s sad to watch.
Here is the UK Met Office contribution. Much ado about nothing really although a little damp in places.
————————–
July 2009
Mean temperatures were close to the 1971–2000 normal across the UK. The largest departure was 0.8 °C above normal over Scotland, whereas Wales and parts of western England were slightly below normal. The month was similar to July 2008, but somewhat warmer than July 2007. Rainfall was significantly above normal in almost all areas, particularly in a broad swathe stretching from south-west England, through Wales, the Midlands and northern England into eastern Scotland. These areas recorded over twice the average July rainfall, with south-west England, south Wales and parts of north-east England recording over three times the normal amount. The drier areas were in northern and western Scotland and eastern East Anglia, with up to 150% of the July average. Provisionally, it was the wettest July on record over England and Wales (in a series from 1914), being slightly wetter than July 2007 and much wetter than July 2008. Over Wales it was ranked 2nd in this series, with only July 1939 being wetter. Over the UK, it was also wetter than July 2007 and 2008 and provisionally ranks 4th but close to the July totals in 1936, 1939 and 1988. Sunshine was close to the 1971–2000 normal across the UK, northern and western Scotland faring best with about 120% of normal. The wettest areas were also the dullest, with south-west England and Wales recording typically 80% of normal sunshine.
A maximum temperature of 30.9 °C was recorded at Heathrow (Greater London) on the 1st. Tulloch Bridge (Highland) recorded a minimum temperature of 1.0 °C on the 10th. Cardinham (Cornwall) recorded 94 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours ending at 0900 on the 17th.
Andrew P (04:36:07) :
Regards from your old home town, where it is about 15C and has just started to rain.
Is this my old home town of Aberfeldy?!
Classical signature of a humongous, persistent Hudson Bay / Canadian Shield Low. Actually a bit disturbing.
RE: Hurry up with the plans to deepen the Suez and Panama Canals.
Now that will put one heck of a damper on Global Trade.
It will also regionalize the balance of power.
This, plus, the direct impacts of the Great Cold, plus, the resulting World War …
Say hello to “The Second Age of Migrations.”
Dave Nicosia (04:57:14) : et al
I have read that the South Pole had a record cold July!
see bottom of article below from Joseph D’Aleo from ICECAP website
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/big_apples_cold_summer/
That does not jive with the satellite record for Antarctica. “Watts” up with that???
Guys,
The satellite record shows lower troposphere temperature, yes? And air arms upon descent, yes? and the surface in Antarctica cools during the long Antarctic night by radiation, eh? And with the descending air there is possibly very clear sky over antarctic, right? SO descending air during a winter night and one could get exactly what we observe, oui? Well, I don’t know the actual state of affairs, but one could have record high temperatures in the lower troposphere and record cold on the ground. The two observations are not mutually exclusive. It works out in Wyoming like this in the winter.
And of course, the projection of the map makes the “warm” areas (whether they exist or not) look much larger than they really are.
RE: Our tomatoes and potatos just got hit with LATE BLIGHT yesterday.
The leading indicators of complete disaster just keep piling up. Meanwhile, the masses, the mass media and the criminal politicians whistle past the grave yard.
“UK Sceptic (01:07:13) : We will also face a chronic water shortage in the future. Anyone living with the British climate will understand that the only chronic shortage we are facing is political reality…
E M Smith – Pardon? Water shortage? In a country surrounded by seas when desalinization is cheaper than a water pipe from the mountains 100 miles away? Water shortage, when the last time “mum” was “home” it rained every day except July 9, I think it was? (It was a long summer, from August 3 to the 5th 😉 I think she said…)”
Umm.. we will indeed have a huge water shortage in SE UK. Not because there is any shortage of water per se, but because there is a shortage of water transport facility and water storage facility.
We were the first country in the world to have a modern water distribution and sewage system (since the Romans?) We have been using this for the last 200 years, and it’s been getting old. And you make much more money building homes in SE England than building reservoirs. What this means is that the UK water provision has been operating with tighter and tighter tolerances. Now, if we have a slightly dry winter we will have hosepipe bans in the summer…..
SteveSadlov (08:45:48) :
This, plus, the direct impacts of the Great Cold, plus, the resulting World War …
Say hello to “The Second Age of Migrations.”
Are you becoming an astrologist or just a realist?
John Luft (08:48:48) :
“And of course, the projection of the map makes the “warm” areas (whether they exist or not) look much larger than they really are.”
A yes – Mercator’s projection. A nice bit of maths really – what is it – something to do with a hyperbolic cosine?
I remember an episode of the brilliant BBC radio programme (back in the days when the BBC made us Brits proud) – “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”. The late great Willie Rushton managed to get Mercator’s Perojection into the ‘late Arrivals at the Geographer’s Ball”. Genius.
John Luft (08:48:48) :
And of course, the projection of the map makes the “warm” areas (whether they exist or not) look much larger than they really are.
Good point.
Jimmy Haigh (08:12:11) :
Andrew P (04:36:07) :
Regards from your old home town, where it is about 15C and has just started to rain.
Is this my old home town of Aberfeldy?!
Yes, I’m not psychic by the way, I recall you mentioned that you were from ‘feldy in a previous thread. It has stopped raining and the sun is out now. If you want daily updates go to: http://www.aberfeldyweather.com (forgotten his name, ex TV weatherman, who moved to Camserney a few years back).
Lemme see if I have got this straight; 73.5 F is 0.8 F below the average of 74.3, and converting to actual temperature, that is 0.444 deg C lower than average.
Precipitation on the other hand was 2.90 inches (RSF units), or 0.14 above the average of 2.76.
Now a quick Soroban computation says that is a 5.07 % increase in total preciptiation, resulting from a 0.444 C decrease in average temperature, which would be a 11.4% decrease in precipitation for a one degree C fall in average temperature.
Of corurse Wentz et al claimed that a one degree C rise in mean surfgace temperature results in a 7% increase in total precipitation.
So for the USA, the precip is backwards, and too large a change to boot, compared to Wentz et al who of course were talking aboput global numbers.
So one might conclude that what is good for the USA doesn’t necessarily hold for everybody else.
The NOAA numbers may be real; but they don’t say diddley about global climate change; well the climate is going to change no matter what NOAA says.
“I have never understood why anyone thinks it’s so important to have polar ice caps.”
In the interglacial before this one (which was warmer than this one has been) it is likely that an ice-free pole in summer was the norm.
The bottom line on all of this is that it does not conform with nor can it be explained by the GCM’s. They are obviously not considering all of the factors involved in climate. The centerpiece of “An Inconvenient Truth” was Hurricane Katrina. If stronger, more frequent hurricanes are a sure sign of AGW, then what is NOT stronger, more frequent hurricanes a marker of?
I honestly don’t care what these temperatures do on a monthly basis. It is the extent to which they are explained by the models that is important and the models are clearly wrong.
I’ve seen on these blogs where warmers are hoping for an El Nino so that temperatures go up. That is not proof of AGW and is an implicit acknowledgement that there is more to the global temperature than the alarmists are willing to explicitly acknowledge. The same goes for sunspots. The warmers get all excited over a few sunspots. The same logic applies, the are tacitly acknowledging that sunspots will affect global temps.
Sorry for the rant, I’m getting a little tired of all of this nonsense.
So is it possible that in July 2009, Antarctica had a positive temperature anomaly in winter, with no daily sunlight anywhere south of 72deg 50min South, for the whole of that month? (1.) What’s wrong with that? Well maybe nothing…
Have a look at the annual temperature track for the Dome Argus AWS (2.). Dome A is located at 80deg 22min S, and yes it’s only one measurement point, but be honest, just how many weather stations are there in Antarctica? Look at the subsurface 1m temperature trace (the blue line). This winter it is about minus 60C compared to last July’s value of -62C. Not convinced? Look at July 2006 & 2005, it seems to me that July 2009 is warmer than previous years.
So where has all this extra heat in the ground come from? Well it’s not sunlight that’s for sure. The ice is warmer than the air, so the heat is residual summer energy stored in the ground? Nice try and in general yes for the deeper levels, but over the last month the 0.1m subsurface temperature on the daily track has been rising as well as falling, but rising after the air temperature has increased and not before. (It’s now falling again (3.) but as always the 0.1m subsurface sensor is following on, about 3 days behind, and not preceding the changes in air temperature).
The only possible explanation is that, during July 2009, in the dark austral winter with no ambient light to warm the surface, the air at Dome A has been episodically heating the ice at the shallowest subsurface level (0.1m). How so? Well think of the Chinook wind (4.) for example, when warm air melts the snow; that’s air heating the ground. But there are no mountains nearby to Dome A that can generate a Foehn wind (5.) so that cannot be right! Yes, also true, but this warmth in Antarctica is caused by descending upper tropospheric air being heated by adiabatic compression. When there is an active surface anticyclone, the air in it warms as it falls under gravity, turning potential energy into kinetic energy; and so this July, the ice surface at Dome A has been warmed by the air coming down from above, giving us a positive temperature anomaly.
So what happens to all this descending air? The resulting extra mass of air in the anticyclone loses heat at the ice surface, as can be seen by the marked temperature inversion (6.) in the Dome A air profile. The radiative cooling to space of the ice surface, cools the air above it and generates a dense cold air mass that advects north off the ice-cap, down slope to sea level (Dome A is at 4084m 13,240ft elevation). This katabatic wind (7.) helped form the mobile polar air mass which caused the recent snowfall in Argentina (8.).
Links
1.) Sunrise sunset times http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php
2). Dome A annual temperatures http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=20368
3). Done A current weekly temperatures http://www.aad.gov.au/weather/aws/dome-a/index.html
4). Chinook wind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_wind
5). Foehn wind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind
6). Temperature inversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)
7). Katabatic wind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabatic_wind
8). Historic snow event in South America http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/historic-snow-event-in-south-america/
I am a little late to this party, but that UAH map showing a July heatwave in Antarctica also doesn’t seem to jive with the NSIDC Antarctic Ice Extent data:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
As a resident [unfortunately] of the lower “left” coast I’d like to know why my “tummaters is nuthin but li’l, hard, one-inch green knobs” instead of what they should be if it is so warm here?
The only veggie doing well is the Swiss chard.
Regarding the Arctic, my earlier forecast has not changed. The jet stream pattern set up at the beginning of the melt season has been resistant to change. Much of the ice has compacted together from strong winds opposite those we have had the past two melt season. What has melted as melted slowly in place. I am still predicting a close to average amount of ice at the beginning of the ice build-up season and I believe the ice that is still there is anything but thin. I am ready now to predict a strong return to normal ice levels (and am leaning to above average amounts) with average 2010 Summer melt. We will be solidly within the ice average all year round in short order. The melt pattern of the past 10 years or so was probably related to weather pattern variations tied to jet stream behavior during El Nino’s and then jet stream behavior during La Nina and had nothing to do with CO2.
Philip Mulholland, you sweety! Your post was simply delicious eye candy. Talk more weather to me! The prevailing winds (more circular and towards the Arctic instead of out to Fram Strait) and weather fronts (what they had) around the Arctic have allowed those of us who are weather geeks to watch the Arctic in its basic mode. If the basic pattern prevails, we are on a return to normal levels of ice year round. It may even be possible that Summer melt could become less than average due to continued ice thickness buildup caused by inward/circular Summer wind patterns.
Just the facts, te graph you posted is for Antarctic sea ice extent. Look closely and you will see that the anomaly is mostly over the Antarctic continent and not over the southern seas.
The flow of heat is from the Sun into the oceans and then back out again via the atmosphere. Antarctica is hotter than normal so it’s radiating more heat away to space and cooling down. The blue bits are cooler than normal so are radiating less heat and warming up. A cooling Earth looks warmer!
Paul Vaughan (02:01:35) : You wrote: “Temps quickly plunged to less than HALF of what they were.”
We know what you mean by this statement, for example, the Temp may have gone from 40 C to 20 C. 20 being HALF of 40. But do this in F degrees and we have approximately: 104 F to 68 F; or a drop of [(104 – 68)/ 104 ] = .346; or a decrease of just over one-third. One has to use Kelvins to get a correct answer – this scale has a non-arbitrary zero point.
Weather, but not really temperature specific. This happened yesterday near Des Moines. Mother Nature rules.
Just to show what 70 mph winds and large hail can do.
This ran west to east about 25 miles south of us Sunday morning.
http://www.kcci.com/video/20350222/index.html
http://www.kcci.com/video/20349385/index.html
John Luft (08:48:48) : “And of course, the projection of the map makes the “warm” areas (whether they exist or not) look much larger than they really are.”
Good point! This refers to the second map – world view – not the one of the USA lower 48. It looks like the world view uses a “Miller Cylindrical” projection (scroll down here):
http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html
within which distortion of areas and shapes in high latitudes is extreme.
gtrip (04:24:23) : At the same time, the gravitational force (no one out there can explain that can you?), has lessoned on our planet and we are starting to see the effects in the earthquakes that are happening.
Just be quiet about that, would you gtrip? If the Alarmists get a hold of this news, they’ll declare a gravity crisis and the gummit will force us to wear ankle weights.
Tie me kangaroo down, boys, tie me kangaroo down…
A maximum temperature of 30.9 °C was recorded at Heathrow (Greater London) on the 1st.
What a shock!
An enormous airport, surrounded by prodigious expanses of tarmac, with constant movements of vehicles, ground handling equipment, and airliners up to A380 size, plus heavy air conditioning for passenger terminals and administrative buildings, gets hot even in an otherwise cool summer.
Who knew?
Chris Thorne (12:48:09):-
It’s been pretty hot at Paddington Railway Station as well.
Mind you, that may have something to do with the enormous glass roof and relatively few apertures …
I don’t ascribe much significance to the United States temperature record as an index of global warming. It is a small percentage of the world’s land area.
It turns out that the global average temperature anomaly for this july is 60, which is the second warmest July since the record started in 1880, surpassed only by the big El Nino year of 1998. This comes on top of a June anomaly of 64m, which is also the second warmest.
These numbers are high, despite a neutral El Nino and an inactive sun.
I consider this a more significant statistic than the US temperature.
arch stanton (11:13:11) :
“the anomaly is mostly over the Antarctic continent and not over the southern seas.”
Sort of. The area of the largest positive anomaly appears to be over the continent, but the positive anomaly in the Southern Pacific appears to extend well beyond the coast, as it does in the Southern Atlantic and Southeastern India Ocean.
Ignoring the hump in the NSIDC chart, it seems that Antarctic Ice Extent in July increased at an about average pace, while the UAH map seems to show that a large part of the Antarctic coast experienced either above average or average temperature anomalies. Understanding that ocean temperature also has a significant impact on ice formation, I can see that this is plausible, but I am still skeptical.
Jimmy Haigh (09:36:25) :
From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/20/polar-albedo-feedback/
Ric Werme (13:58:29) :
That’s not a Mercator projection, in fact, it’s not a projection at all, just a cartesian plot of latitude and longitude and is the most common sort of climate map we see. I see no reason to take Basil to task for referring to that sort of a map. A Mercator projection cannot cover the whole world, as the poles
have to take up infinite area. In this cartesian map they just get stretched out into a line.
See http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/gif/unproj.gif
vs http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/gif/mercator.gif
Personally, I think the “Sinusoidal Equal Area” map would make the most sense for us. http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/gif/sinusoid.gif
All links came from http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj_f.html
eric (13:17:07) :
Don’t believe in those oranges and reds. Think: The souther hemisphere is currently at winter time so it will take all the color inkjet they have to counterbalance low temps.
“It turns out that the global average temperature anomaly for this july is 60, which is the second warmest July since the record started in 1880”
If you back out the “adjustments” I believe you would find that not to be the case. The data you are looking at is bogus. I believe that is quite well established at this point.
Lots of map varieties available, but I think what would be useful for most folks would be a few Google Earth overlays (kmz files ) , perhaps real time, that are built from this sort of data. Reason is it allows one to “rotate” the globe in any direction, zoom, etc. Anybody out there know how to do this?
crosspatch (14:44:14) :
wrote:
“Eric:
“It turns out that the global average temperature anomaly for this july is 60, which is the second warmest July since the record started in 1880″
If you back out the “adjustments” I believe you would find that not to be the case. The data you are looking at is bogus. I believe that is quite well established at this point.”
This is only established in the minds of those who believe that there is a conspiracy to fool the public about global warming. They use the same logic that leads to the conclusion that Bush is responsible for planning and executing 911.
The main difference between Hadcrut and GISS is that Hadcrut ignores areas where there is a lack of surface stations and GISS interpolates to cover these regions. Since the Arctic lacks surface stations and is the fastet warming region of the globe, GISS shows a slightly larger warming trend than Hadcrut. The adjustments are a legitimate algorithm to deal with equipment changes and urbanization.
A favourite gardening book of mine (courtesy of good old Readers Digest!) gave maps for the onset of the seasons and such useful information and always reminded me that in Scotland August was to be considered an autumn month.
This year for the first time for many a year that has been true from the beginning.
It’s not only to do with temperature as such; it’s the quality of the air and the light and the wind and just something in the general behaviour of plants and (especially) birds that says “it’s autumn”.
How you test scientifically for that I wouldn’t know but in my part of Scotland at least autumn has come early this year and every gardener (and allotmenteer) I’ve spoken to has said the same.
And I suspect a hard winter is set to follow.
RE: Are you becoming an astrologist or just a realist?
Sadly, it is the latter. We are digging the hole deeper and deeper.
RE: It’s not only to do with temperature as such; it’s the quality of the air and the light and the wind and just something in the general behaviour of plants and (especially) birds that says “it’s autumn”.
How you test scientifically for that I wouldn’t know but in my part of Scotland at least autumn has come early this year and every gardener (and allotmenteer) I’ve spoken to has said the same.
Same here in Northern CA. Autumn appears to be here now. We even had our (typical of late Sept / Oct) “Indian Summer” weather pattern a few days ago. Multiple species of trees are turning. Etc.
“”” E.M.Smith (23:18:07) :
I’ve been playing around with GIStemp and with “Global Average Temperature” calculation issues for a while now. This posting is full of references to the average temperature. The good news is that the US temperature series is fairly complete, so this is probably a decent conclusion.
The sidebar is that the world temperature series is very spotty. We start with ONE thermometer in 1701, ramp up to 9000+, then drop to a few thousand today. IMHO, the side effect of this on the temperature record is what we call “AGW”. I think I’ve pretty much showed that there is no AGW if you hold the number of thermometers relatively constant (with using the 3000 longest lived thermometers with the most records):
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/co2-takes-summers-off/
and the short lived thermometers seem to be largely in warm places and that seems to be the reason we have “global warming”: adding thermometers in places like Brazil and Australia:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/well-theres-your-global-warming-problem/
But I’m still left with a ’sour taste’ in the mouth over the whole issue of a “global average temperature”. I call the GAT a “global average of thermometers” since I think that is more accurate… but I’m still not very sure just exactly what does it mean to average a bunch of thermometers together over time and over land…
I *think* that the average of thermometers ought to be lower in cold times and higher in warm times, but I’m just not comfortable calling it a temperature.
The thing I’ve found is that the “global average temperature” is more a function of where you’ve stuck the thermometers than it is a function of changes in the earth systems (or of GIStemp processing – but more on that in future postings…) so I’m left wondering about this article:
Where in the USA has NOAA stuck Carmen Sandiego’s thermometers?
It really is, at it’s core, a question of the number, quality, and placement of all the thermometers. Put more in, oh, Saudi Arabia, and the global average temperature goes up. Put more on frozen mountain tops and it goes down.
It really is that simple. “””
E.M. I thought you would be more up to speed by now. Calculating the mean surface temperature of the earth is very simple; an 8th grade science class could do it in an afternoon.
First you place one thermometer in the center of each square metre of the earth’s surface, that being the standard of distance measure. So not you can sample the surface temperature for each square meter of the earth surface (it’s a sampled data system).
Now you blow a whistle or ring a bell, and the students read all the thermometers all at the same time, and write down the temperature sample for each square metre of the earth surface. Then you multiply the temperature sample by one square metere, to get the area weighted sample of temperature foir that location. Then you add up all the values registered from all the thermometers, and then divide the total by the surface area of the earth. The result is the global mean surface temperature for the earth at the instant of time when the students read the thermometers.
Next you repeat the process for each second of time; that being the SI unit of time, and you record all those mean global temperatures for each of the pi x 10^7 seconds in a year; so that you have data samples for each of the seasonal variations that one expects on a planet such as ours.
Then you add up all the global mean surface temperature averages for each second, and divide by pi x 10^7 which is the number of annual second records you have written down. The answer is the annual mean global surface temperature.
See I told you it was easy; but it does use a lot of thermometers, and a lot of 8th grade students too.
You can try various AlGorythms to reduce the number of thermometers and students. since the sun moves about 400 metres per second max across the surface you can try spacing the thermometers further apart, so the sun doesn’t jump so many in a single bound. One thermometer in the middle of each square km would be a good first reduction that would cut the number of thermometeres and students by a million factor; which is a worthwhile saving of precious mercury.
Actually, there’s a general theory that explains just how many thermometers you really need. A long history of weather measurements shows that the temperature on 3rd avenue and the temperature on 4th avenue, at 42nd St is always pretty much the same. In fact the whole global temperature map has its up and down cycles at any instant, some small (high frequency) and some large (l;ow frequenc). In the SF bay area the temperature goes through an up and down cycle in as little as 10 km distance. Some places may cycle in less distance.
The rule is; whatever the highest frequency of a cyclic change in the temperature with distance, anywhere on the whole earth, you have to place one thermometer everywhere that is separated by no more than half that complete cycle distance. So if one cycle of temperature difference over 10 km is the fastest change with distance then you have to space the thermometers no more than 5 km apart. Wow that would reduce the number of thermometers by another factor of 25, not to mention the 8th grade sstudents.
Well now you can see how easy it is; so long as the temperature never makes more than 1/2 cycle of temperature change between thermometers, then you will get the correct result.
Now the one second change between readings is also a bit fast, since the sun takes 24 hours to go around the earth, giving us the diurnal temperature cycle we are all familiar with; but there are faster changes with time as well. Since the surface heats up faster than it cools when the sun goes down, the tediurnal temperature cycle is not time symmetric, rising faster and falling slower, so there is a ferequency component that is at least as fast as once every 12 hours. And that is ignoring clouds which will make the temperature cycle up and down even faster than once every 12 hours.
You can be sure that planet earth takes note of these faster cloud cycles, and correctly integrates the incoming solar energy even with the cloud changes. So really you should take the mean global temperature more than a couple of times a day if you want to get an accurate annual average. The earth is absolutely guaranteed to get an accurate value.
The frequency rule is pretty strict; if you fall short of the proper sampling frequency by only a factor of two, you will find that the errors introduced will make it impossible to correctly recover the average temperature, and the whole exercise will have been for naught.
Now compare that simple process with the elaborate one that Hansen uses where sometimes he has his thermometers 1200 km apart, and thinks that is a hiogh enough sampling frequency. Remember they can’t be any further apart than one half cycle of the highest frequency; not the lowest frequency.
The don’t have to be evenly spaced; but no two nearest neighbors may be further apart than the minimum distance; so a non uniform spacing actually requires more thermometers; so there is no advantage to non uniform spacing.
So even thoguh it is a simple problem we actually don’t have anywhere near enough thermometers around the earth to get an accurate value for the earth’s mean surface temperature, even if we only wanted to get it for one instant.
Consequently Dr James Hansen is engaging in an exercise of self flagellation; which will never reveal the global mean surface temperature of the earth.
Here, 50 miles north of San Francisco, the Pepper trees have started to turn in the last couple of weeks. This is usually the first sign of fall coming, but is about three weeks early this year.
Ric Werme (14:23:59) :
Thanks for putting me right and for the mapping links Ric.
x33 (18:04:11) :
I was in Lake Tahoe in September 1993. The guys there told me that the snow comes on October 10th every year. I don’t know if that is a fact or not but it will be interesting to see when the snow arrives this year.
Did someone here mention that the reason that Antarctica is all reds and oranges is because the printer ran out of blue ink half way down the plot? I like that!
Even in a warming trend, aren’t average monthly temperatures over a given region going to be below average almost half the time?
Isn’t this kind of like saying that average temperatures do vary?
So, in order for the globe to be warming, according to this site, every cherry picked month has to be above average, for every cherry-picked region on the globe?
Mary Hinge,
You might want to revisit where in cycle 9 things were during September 1845 when late blight was devastating potato crops in Ireland.
The cycle started during July 1843 and was 12.4 years long.
Grace,
I’ve already pulled and baged 30 plants. From the looks of things I’ll be pulling and baging tomorrow.
George E. Smith (17:48:30) :
You are missing the point regarding temperature measurements aimed at detecting climate change. The purpose of the measurments is not to measure the average temperature, but rather to measure the temperature anomaly, i.e. the change in average temperature over time. Measurement of the change in temperature will require fewer data points than measurement of the actual average global temperature.
eric:
“You are missing the point regarding temperature measurements aimed at detecting climate change. The purpose of the measurments is not to measure the average temperature, but rather to measure the temperature anomaly, i.e. the change in average temperature over time.”
I guess I’m missing the point, too. How do you measure the “change in average temperature over time” without knowing what the average temperature ever was?
And as to E.M. Smith’s point, how does one get a believable anomaly figure when the measuring “instrument” (the collection of thermometers) changes from month to month and year to year? E.M. held the measuring “instrument” constant by using the same 3000 stations and found nothing to get up about. Please explain the error of his ways. It would be illuminating.
George E. Smith (17:48:30) :
Seems to me satellite measurements could fulfill the criteria, with much fewer but graduate students.
La La La the temperature is going down, ice is increasing. You only have to look at the weather to know it is getting colder.
The world shows a clear warming trend. It does.
The. World. Shows. A. Clear. Warming. Trend.
the reason it does this is because the CO2 in the atmosphere has increased since we started burning fossil fuels.
Sticking you fingers in your ears and going la la la doesn’t change that.
Regards
SteveSadlov (17:16:52) :
150 mi. north of SF and you can see, feel the fall in the air. The animals know it too. The daily high temps are deceiving, they get there in the space of half an hour and drop rapidly before the sun get truly low on the horizon.
The most striking change, though, is the apparent lack of brightness to the day.
Started a week ago.
George E Smith
You forgot to add in that ALL the thermometers need to be of the eaxct same make and calibrated to an agreed standard measurement. It all sounds simple. I suggest we make this a joint project. Will you apply for the research funds or shall I?
Tonyb
Andrew P (09:51:11) :
Thanks for the link to the Aberfeldy weather. I’d noticed in your posts that you are from highland Perthshire too? It’s a small blogworld!
>>>The UK government made these dire predictions (water
>>>and food shortage etc) based on met office data.
The only reason London will be faces with water shortages is that they have stuffed the place with another 5 million immigrants. Shock horror, if you increase the population, they use more water….
.
And you might want to revisit the post I was responding to.
Just a quick look at the sunspot numbers shows that this statement is totally false http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/teacher_resources/suncycle_sheet.html
Notice how in the 1840’s the number of sunspots never goes into single figures. In graph form you will get this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png
Notice how the mid 18th century (from approx 1835 to 1874) was a period of solar maxima.
The potato blight had absolutely nothing to do with ‘low sunspot numbers’ and everything to do with the introduction of the blight fungi the previous year. If you still believe low sunspot numbers were the cause of the potato blight then you would also be interested to know that 1845 was the year that Friedrich Wöhler managed to manufacture enough Aluminium (or Aluminum as you Americans quaintly call it) to make hats. I’m sure you know of a number of people who swear by them.
P.S. Do the Americans call Plutonium Plutonum, or Uranium Uranum etc. if not, why not?
The question one has to ask is why in July to they compare the average temperature to 20th century average. If I am not mistaken in remarking about June’s record warmth, they used a 40 year average (1960-99). it would be nice to compare apples to apple. I would like to know what the anomaly is compare to the 40 year average.
eric (19:26:23) :
George E. Smith (17:48:30) :
You are missing the point regarding temperature measurements aimed at detecting climate change. The purpose of the measurments is not to measure the average temperature, but rather to measure the temperature anomaly, i.e. the change in average temperature over time. Measurement of the change in temperature will require fewer data points than measurement of the actual average global temperature.
Great! Now just tell me where I get an anomaly meter!
Oh, wait, we don’t have anomaly meters? Oh. What? We use a thermometer to measure temperature then compute an anomaly? We don’t have any way to measure an anomaly, so to get one we are still limited by the needs of thermometers? Oh Dear…
Please be a bit more careful about what can be measured and what is computed from some other real measurement.
That bugs me almost as much as talk of “forcing”. There is no “forcing” in my physics books. There are heat flows, gravity, electrostatics, and a whole host of other interesting things. But try as I might I cannot find the SI units for “forcing” listed anywhere…
It’s been a cold July for the continental US. Amazingly, this only covers a small percentage of the planet. Other parts of the world had heatwaves in July.
The anomaly map is from the UAH satellite data. Is nothing sacred?
In fact, satellite measurements of the poles have issues because of the ice. Doesn’t mean its wrong, but it also means that satellite records including the poles aren’t necessarily *right*.
Can this be resolved with this alarmist article?
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/08/second_warmest_july_on_record.html
It appears that Antartica should be muddy in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter.
Did I missed the link to the UAH map source? If not could it be posted?
*******
E.M.Smith (23:30:32) :
If they are calling this warm, or even just normal, I’m calling Bull Shi…eist on their whole map. I’ve finally got some tomatoes, but the green beans are still sulking and the cool season plants are thrilled. This is NOT a warm summer in the South Bay…
******
E.M.Smith, I think there’s a problem comparing sat & surface temps. Since the sats average the temp over a relatively thick atmospheric slice, they don’t pick up the shallow temp inversions of colder surface air that occur in various places & times that surface thermometers will.
For serious study, ocean heat content is the way to bypass all this atmospheric temp stuff.
Well Mary Hinge, you stated in your reply to Grace:
“Yet another example of coolist alarmism. The potato famine started in 1845, the same year as the peak of the solar maxima. ”
At no time during 1845 was there a “peak of the solar maxima” whatever that is.
As a matter of interest for Grace:
In 1840 late blight destroyed the potato crops in New England.
North of 43 south of 44 (08:46:21) :
So you agree that the potato famine wasn’t caused by a deep solar minimum then?
I have no concrete data to prove or disprove what helped cause the potato famine in regards to solar influences.
I did however have the required data to throw out your good buddies remark.
Of course there is ‘concrete’ data to show there was NO “Deep solar minimum” when the the potato blight tragedy occured.!
Be careful now since it would be plauseable that the only thing that would be required is to link the solar influence to a relatively minor fluctuation in moisture levels for a fairly short period of time. Look up and see the pretty clouds.
So a really “deep” solar minimum (whatever that really means) may not be needed.
I already gave you a second data point (hint 1840). Which ims (CRS sets in after 19 or so, just ask any teenager) was at about the same level of sunspot activity as 1845, yes that is correct on the downside of cycle 8.
Now what constitues a “deep” solar minimum?
I had a look at Mary’s links and it shows it very well. presumably Grace was referring to the Dalton Minimum and getting her dates a bit mixed up. After the Dalton Miminum there was a period of high solar activity, the mid 19th century maximum. The term solar minimum and maximum is not applied to individual solar cycles but to the longer term trends. To simplify, the peaks and troughs of sunspot numbers during the mid 19th century were much higher than earlier in the 19th century and comparable with the late 20th century.
To repeat the solar minimum (this was what Grace was referring to) was not responsible for the Irish Famine. You also did not havethe ‘data’ to throw out Mary’s remark, she would seem to be correct in that discussion and you are plainly very wrong (though understandable due to your ignorance of what constitutes a solar minimum).
There is a theory that during low sunspot periods (now for example) more cosmic radiation reachess earth, and that this causes more clouds to form. Clouds reflect radiant heat whether its coming up from the earth or down from the sun. If this theory is true one would expect that those parts of the world receiving the suns heat would receive less of it and cool, those receiving none (Antarctica at present) would loose less heat. This would explain the antarctic anomaly and the general cooling. Does anyone know of data for cloudiness?
International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP)
http://www.gewex.org/isccpdata.htm
NASA CERES
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/ceres_aqua.html
Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) Earthshine Project
http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/
On October 1, 2007, the National Snow and Ice Data Center issued a news release headlined “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows.” As that event took place just before our sun went into a record period of inactivity, we might expect to see a pause or a reverse trend develop if our climate is primarily being driven by solar dynamics. As we are still seeing the sun go day after day without a single sunspot, we should see a cooling trend develop if sunspots correlate to Global Warming.
On the other hand, if we see continued all-time record melts of arctic sea ice in the face of this reduced solar activity, we would have un-deniable proof that the increasing industrial pollution of the atmosphere is driving our climate.
In the context of global warming, looking just at US data constitutes an incomplete analysis.
GLOBAL land/sea temperatures in July were the 5th hottest ever, and the ocean surface temperature set a new record high;
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090814_julyglobalstats.html