Guest post by Richard Keen, Ph.D.
To paraphrase Led Zeppelin, “It’s been cooling, I ain’t fooing…”
December was a chilly month across much of the U.S., and at my site (the NWS co-op station for Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, NW of Denver at an elevation 8950 feet, or 720 millibars, December was the coldest December (and the coldest month of any name) in 27 years of record. The average of 16.5 was 0.8 degrees colder than December 1983. Over the entire record, nine months averaged colder than 20F; of these, five occurred during 1983-1990, none during 1991-2005, and four during 2007-2009. It appears that he warm spell of the 1990’s and early 2000’s has ended.
Here’s a chart of the past decade of annual temperatures
updating my post from a year ago. The recent cooling trend continues, with 2009 coming in at 38.9F, colder than 2008 and a full 3 degrees F colder than 2003. The “Tipping Point” in 2003-2004 is clear on the updated graph.
The longer record at my location
(Click to see animation)
shows the Tipping Point more dramatically through the miracle of animation. The added trend line is from a special “best fit Hockey Stick” code I found in some downloaded e-mails last month, although I had to alter the code to change the angle of the blade.
After last January’s post, someone commented on “Watts Up With That?” that (s)he “didn’t really think [Anthony Watts] couldn’t scrape up any less significant data”. I was heartbroken with the thought that my 10,059 daily max and min temperatures could be the least significant atmospheric observations ever made. So allow me to put the record from my particular station in perspective.
The site is about 60 miles from the geographic center of Colorado, and a couple of thousand feet higher than the average elevation of the state. The aerial photo of the site (marked by the red asterisk) looks to the northwest.
Following is a table of correlation between Coal Creek Canyon annual means and measurements of annual temperatures for the entire state of Colorado.
Correlation R between Coal Creek Canyon and:
0.92 NCDC Statewide Divisional average
0.89 GHCN and Hadley gridded temperatures (the two were so similar they were averaged together)
0.91 NCAR-NCEP Reanalysis gridded temperatures
0.95 Average of all three
These correlations are much better than those of any Bristlecones with that other Hockey Stick. Although there’s bristlecones a short hike from my house
I leave them alone. With a correlation R = 0.95. the Coal Creek station is pretty representative of the entire state of Colorado. Colorado, in turn, is in the Rocky Mountain and intermountain West, a region projected by the IPCC to have the greatest warming in the “lower 48” states – about 4C, or 7F, over this century.
According to the IPCC models, greenhouse gas warming should be greatest over continental interiors and in the middle troposphere, so Coal Creek Canyon is an ideal “global warming” monitoring site. How, then, is the projected 0.7F per decade warming coming along?
Since 1985, the overall trend has been +0.3F per decade, about half of the IPCC projection. Since 2000, the trend has been -3F per decade – four times greater than the IPCC projection, and in the opposite direction!
This is an example of how one station’s data can be significant for assessing climate change, but only if the station is carefully installed and maintained, is in a location relatively free of non-climatic influences, has records that are diligently kept, and, above all, does not have its records mysteriously altered. It would be instructive to see records from other observers who have quality records of long duration.
Richard Keen, Ph.D.
Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado
spangled drongo (15:47:19) :
Would have expected December to be even lower.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Would have been lower, if it were not for El Nino.
Obviously, it’s worse than we thought!
2-4 more inches of global warming expected this week in the Kansas City area. We are already still buried under a near-record global warming from Christmas Eve, plus 3 or more inches last weekend. We are also enduring record cold, with no end in site. I haven’t seen weather like this since the 1970s. How much more global warming must we endure before we freeze to death?
I just had an interesting idea. I know we have several regular contributors here that live in Colorado and the Denver Metro area, and was thinking it would be interesting to do an Urban heat island test, and get a number of individuals to make simultaneous temperature readings (or as close as reasonably possible) across the Denver Metro basin and surrounding areas.
It might be useful to get a snap shot of how much temperature variability you see in this sort of transitional terrain. I imagine it would make for some useful documentation to show a representative example of real metro area temperature profiles vs temperature records which are “reconstructed” by synthesizing data from nearby reporting stations using the sort of techniques used by the “official sources” and their corrections.
If Dr. Keen or anyone else here in the metro area is interested, perhaps we could put together a temperature snap shot project?
Throw in a dozen or two interested college students and we could get perhaps 30 temperatures across the metro basin and nearby terrain.
If so the moderators, can share my email info with others interested in this sort of ground truth project.
Larry
John Sims (17:27:29) :
One of the hypotheses regarding the Younger Dryas is indeed a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation. However, even wikipedia notes that this does not explain why South America cooled first. I don’t think there is yet a definitive answer to this one.
You could try telling your acquaintance that she may be better off getting her science from here rather than The day after tomorrow.
DaveE.
Pat (17:35:01) , this just goes to show that climate is regional. The USA is going through one of it’s coldest winters while Australia is going through an above average summer.
I think more than anything it demonstrates the nonsense of having a global mean temperature. When you have two disparate regions having temperature extremes, averaging them and saying that there was an 0.?? degree increase for the year overall is… well… silly.
The Gulf Stream is not nearly so susceptible to upset as previously believed. It was once depicted as a “conveyor” system with warm water flowing northward and, it was believed, a deep water return system brought cooled water back south. WIth modern buoys, it was found that the Gulf stream is not as “confined” as it was believed and the “return conveyor” did not exist. The return flow is diffuse with many eddies and branches. In addition, fresh water floats on top of salt water. Consequently, the researchers determined that melting water from Greenland is highly unlikely to drastically affect the Gulf Stream. There are many other factors that affect it. The draining of Lake Aggasiz may have affected climate in Europe 11,000 years ago but that now appears to be an item for debate. It is not even mentioned in the local information for the Province of Manitoba that used to be under Lake Aggasiz: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/19/lakeagassiz.shtml
You can do a search on Lake Aggasiz and decide for yourself.
Here is a recent research article that suggest the cooling was NOT due to rapid draining of Lake Aggasiz:
https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/loope/web/UW_Web_Loope/Website_Template/Lowell%20et%20al.%20-%20Testing%20the%20Lake%20Agassiz%20meltwater%20trigger%20for%20the%20Younger%20Dryas.pdf
Remember not long ago James Hansen and others called for skeptics to be put on trial. Now the situation is reversed, and pro-AGW scientists have betrayed our trust with Climategate. The ramifications of meddling with climate data are severe, including not only a huge waste of money and resources, but also endangering the lives of millions of people who are forced to cope with cold temperatures and misguided legislation.
Madoff went to prison for swindling thousands of investors. Is Climategate any different? There should be a penalty for scientists who knowingly tamper with crucial climate data, like jailtime. It’s our lives, and our Earth that the warmists are messing with. The geo-engineering schemes that have been proposed to halt “global warming” would have even worse consequences.
Blaming global warming for extreme weather events seems to be the new theme. Well for hurricanes, more rain than normal etc. that sounds like it could be true but now I hear folks using this ‘extreme weather due to global warming’ as explanation for unusual cold snaps. I surely hope THAT fails the BS test with the majority of their audience.
I worked for Environment Canada back in 1978-80 , and did a stint up in the High Arctic (Eureka). Left that job but in 1990, became a volunteer for them in Okotoks, AB. Canada.
I operate the ‘climate’ station for Environment Canada and have 20 years worth of data. Over that period of time, average temperature 4.6 C
Indeed, I have a decline also, albiet more recent. 2006, temp was 6.0 C, 2009, 3.9 C, at this rate of decline, we will be in an ice age very shortly!
http://www.lanceappleby.com/OkotoksWeather/GraphsFolder/Okotoks%20Yearly%20Summary.gif
HIDE THE DECLINE!
“It would be instructive to see records from other observers who have quality records of long duration.”
How about Sable Island? It’s a 25 mile sandbar 100 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. Current population: 5
Temperature data for 1897-2007 can be found here:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/bulkdata_e.html?timeframe=3&Prov=XX&StationID=6454&Year=1891&Month=1&Day=1&format=csv&type=mly
Note that the 2002-2005 period is missing from the above dataset, which can be partially infilled using:
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/bulkdata_e.html?timeframe=3&Prov=XX&StationID=26864&Year=2002&Month=1&Day=1&format=csv&type=mly
Additional info, including weather station pics can be found here:
http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/Station_Operations/station_operations.htm
http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/Station_Met/meteorology.htm
I found the Tmax and Tmin trends interesting. The Tmax trend was positive, while the Tmin trend was negative for the period I examined. This is one of the foggiest places on earth, so this may point to a trend towards less fog (warmer days, cooler nights maybe). There are a few buildings in the area, so this could also be explained by energy efficiency retrofits producing less waste heat. I know waste heat can effect temperature readings as I’ve experienced running into the odd warm spot when swimming at a crowded beach ;>
The pics also show concrete paths leading up to the Stevenson screen, which would be an issue Anthony would point out. Interestingly, the runway is the beach, so tarmac warming shouldn’t be a factor.
AJ
I believe This are in Colorado is Rural. If you go out to any rural area and do a temp study, you will find no Warming. It is all the Urban Heat Island throwing of the Data. Yesterday it was 21 degrees warmer in my rural area right out-side Minneapolis, than Minneapolis. Get rid of the Urban Heat Island and the Global Warming would disapear…….John….
I just checked Roy Spencer’s site and the December satelite reading for December is +.28 for December, which surprised me. I live in New Hampshire, and it certainly has been cold for most of the month, so I expected to see some sort of drop, particularly with reports of cold from around the globe.
I recall that during periods of supposed surface warming, the satelite results showed almost no change. Perhaps this is really consistant, as the satelite results from 300K readings from all over the globe, and not just from one hemisphere.
John from MN (18:21:54) :
You’ve just described an urban cool island John if what you say is true, (that your rural site was 21 degrees warmer)
DaveE.
I think Al Gore must be santa claus cos the Gore effect has spread the world over. Thanks for your report, the whole international record needs a full investigation in my opinion. Would love it if more people would report on their local station data.
I feel a change in the air, keep up the good work Anthony x
Lots of neat discussion about little ol’ Coal Creek Canyon!
Here’s a few more cents …
>>Bill Parsons (15:31:54) :
It would be instructive to see records from other observers who have quality records of long duration.
I keep wondering whether coop observers would be willing to just start sending copies of all observations to a neutral party from now on. Might pay to have copies of records if they are getting trashed and distorted.
It is, as Dr. Keen notes, his (and other station-keepers’) work that’s being undermined.
REPLY>>
The NCDC publication “Climatological Data – State, Month, Year” and the like have the original unaltered observations, so there’s no need to bypass the system. Here’s the data flow:
Co-op observers send their data to the local NWS office at the end of the month on a B-91 form. The local office looks for discrepancies, and contacts the observer for correction.
The local NWS sends the B-91 to NCDC, who publishes the data in the CD (state, month, year). You can download the B-91 forms at:
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html
NCDC does a little automated quality checking with a routine that compares a station with neighboring stations to find issues like a day with a max of 72 when neighboring stations were in the 20’s. It works pretty well in places like Iowa and Florida, but a few times they “corrected” my observations on days when my site was warmer than lower stations due to inversions. I had backup recordings that showed the original observations were correct, and their QC routine was actually introducing error. I griped, and NCDC no longer uses that routine for my site. This is a form of homogenization, but NCDC publishes both the original and the “corrected” data in the CD.
These “corrected” numbers from the B-91 go to the NCDC monthly averages and to other sites like the Western Regional Climate Center at:
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/Climsum.html
Then the climate change interrogators at NCDC, CRU, and GISS get their hands on this original data and, as they say, torture it until it confesses.
>>royfomr (15:49:36) :
Excellent post Richard but scary, real scary!
Studies like yours are the ones that really do matter. Weather kills, climate doesn’t!
REPLY>>
I think the largest (more than 1 degree C) and most important climate changes are regional – Western US, northern Alaska, etc. – and that those variations are dominated by oceanic influences (PDO, AMO, Nino, etc.), which in turn modulate the weather (storm tracks, number of hurricanes, droughts, …). The much smaller “global average” changes are tweaked by volcanoes, solar variations, cosmic rays, and, yes, greenhouse gases, but these are all in the fractional degree range (say, 0.2C or so).
>>Alan S. Blue (16:31:53) :
Dr. Keen:
Something I’ve been somewhat concerned about with the usage of the surface station measurements aligns with your work here.
Would it be possible to perform a formal calibration of the Coal Creek surface station measurement to the temperatures reported via satellite? I’d be interested in the strictly local calibration, as well as how well that single measurement might serve as a proxy for the state-wide satellite measurement.
REPLY>>
Sorry to say, the correlation between CC annuals and MSU satellite temperatures is 0.33. Don’t know why that is, but, for example, the el Nino year 0f 1998 was the warmest of the MSU record for the Colorado grid point, but for Coal Creek it was quite average.
>>hotrod (17:43:55) :
I just had an interesting idea. I know we have several regular contributors here that live in Colorado and the Denver Metro area, and was thinking it would be interesting to do an Urban heat island test, and get a number of individuals to make simultaneous temperature readings (or as close as reasonably possible) across the Denver Metro basin and surrounding areas.
REPLY>>
Check out the personal weather station network on the Weather Underground at http://www.wunderground.com and on MESOWEST:
http://www.met.utah.edu/jhorel/html/mesonet/
You’d have to filter out the rooftop stations, those in garages, etc., but there’s dozens of site around metro Denver.
John from MN (18:21:54) :
Not to worry. I figured how they did it!
They turned the air conditioners around & cooled outdoors, simultaneously heating indoors! (not so far-fetched if you look at the physics).
DaveE.
“John from MN (18:21:54) :
Get rid of the Urban Heat Island and the Global Warming would disapear…….John….”
He’s right! DESTROY THE CITIES!
RE; “2009 ends Australia’s warmest decade on record, with a decadal mean temperature anomaly of +0.48C (above the 1961-90 average),” the Bureau of Meterology said
Why didn’t they use the 1961-2000 average? Perhaps it would have shown a fall.
Today the NOAA long-range forecast was issued for the NE Oregon area, basically
for January “Warmer than Normal and Normal Precipitation.”-due to El Nino-praise
the Profit….
Look out…
The heaviest snowfall to hit northern China in nearly six decades continued to snarl traffic yesterday, stranding thousands of passengers on railways and at airports.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/05/content_9263331.htm
Places in Inner Mongolia have had 3m of snow. The 20-30cm we had a few days ago in Beijing has partly been blown away by days of strong winds.
“This is an example of how one station’s data can be significant for assessing climate change, but only if the station is carefully installed and maintained, is in a location relatively free of non-climatic influences, has records that are diligently kept….”
I have a bit of a problem with using this as an example. MMS shows that the location of the station was substatially changed in May of ’99, which appears to coincide with a sharp uptick in reported temperatures. Also, the coordinates for both locations do not appear to be credible locations, so unless someone has been there to take a look-see, we don’t know what the immediate surroundings of the station were. There are a couple of buildings in the area which might be candidates. The changeover to MMTS in 2004 also indicates that it will be near a building. This is not a USHCN station, so I can’t consult the gallery. : )
“2009 was another year of global cooling, which saw numerous low temperature and high snowfall records smashed. The Dutch canals for the first time in 12 years, record cold came to Al Gore’s home town and ironically a blizzard dumped snow on the Copenhagen convention where world leaders met to try and stop global warming. It was so cold that even the BBC was forced to ask, what happened to global warming? As Climategate would reveal, IPCC scientists had been hard at work hiding evidence of global cooling. Yet the observational evidence cannot be ignored.”
Tons of links to cold climate stories.
Global Cooling in 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16781
Lance(18:20:56) should also point out that the population of Okotoks Alberta has more than doubled in the past 10 years. In the interests of honesty. It is also only ~10km south of Calgary following the Rocky Mountains. Additionally, it is an area of weather extremes, due to the mountains. We joke about having all 4 seasons in one day. It is often not a funny joke. It is worthy of note that the spokesman of Environment Canada David Phillips is listed as their senior climatologist. He has a B.A. in geography.
What’s all the fuss about? The solution to all our energy problems is simple as pie:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet
Well, I see belatedly that Dr. Keen is in Coal Creek, so I reckon someone _has_ taken a look-see. Relieves my problem somewhat.
John