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
“In truth, the world dodged a bullet in Copenhagen. There could have been significant damage to many nations’ economies if the warming alarmists’ full agenda had been adopted.
But of course the game has not ended. Here in America, Mr. Obama, Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency all seem committed to regulating our behavior and consumption under the guise of addressing a crisis that is not a crisis. They will do so in a way that will not meaningfully reduce global temperatures, but will substantially hurt the economies and opportunities of the world’s people.”
WSJ
Copenhagen’s Dodged Bullet
Modern men have lived through 20 sudden global warmings.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704905704574622643206570348.html
There should no longer be any question in anybodies mind as to extent and reach of the MSM propaganda machine. TV media is not your friend.
Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored
From 2003 heat wave that killed thousands, to melting Peruvian glaciers the news media find examples of global warming.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20100104141202.aspx
According to the NCDC website, over the last 11 years (1999 to 2009) the average annual temperature change and winter (Dec thru Feb) temperature change(in degrees F) of the following states…
CO was -1.59 / -3.71
WY was -0.51 / -2.61
NV was -0.65 / -2.52
MT was -0.56 / -2.87
UT was -1.27 / -3.63
So it appears that a lot of cooling has gone on in the mountain states recently…
J2
Pat
I really have to wonder at where they get these figures from when they claim that the world was heating up in 2009. The last time I looked on a map New Zealand was part of that world. I can assure you that 2009 was not in any way even a warm year here, let alone a hot one. The coldest May on record nationwide was the start of a prolonged cold period that has persisted through to the end of the year.
The only parts of the country to warm up were the far north of the North Island where they are experiencing drought, and the east coast of both Islands where the El Nino accentuated west-norwest air flow is hotter than normal due to the Fohn affect.
I wasn’t really focused on comparing CC-to-global-average-temp-according-to-XYZ.
I’m asking about a comparison: (Coal Creek Ground Station)-to-(Coal Creek Temperature according to satellite). Yes, that’s trickier to find. And something more than just a correlation coefficient – a bias, offset, and measurement-error-with-this-instrument sort of information.
So many of the potential issues with the surface data would seem amenable to quantification. If, and only if, they were separated out from the slush-fund “anomaly” values.
Nebraska has cold December
December in top 5 for coldest ever
http://new.khastv.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=19549&storytopic=4
Two colder years in a row in my neck of the woods.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/STATIONS//tmp.425727450002.1.1/station.gif
The monthly values GISS has for this station in the text are equal to the monthly averages reported by Duluth in their NOW data. I just checked for this year. The last data point is for 2009. Only Dec hasn’t been added. It’ll tick up about 0.2 when it does.
Thanks for the links, that is not quite what I had in mind, but I will dig through those sources and see how much is usable.
Larry
>>Alan S. Blue (19:49:23) :
I wasn’t really focused on comparing CC-to-global-average-temp-according-to-XYZ.
I’m asking about a comparison: (Coal Creek Ground Station)-to-(Coal Creek Temperature according to satellite). Yes, that’s trickier to find. And something more than just a correlation coefficient – a bias, offset, and measurement-error-with-this-instrument sort of information.
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.
>>>>I used the MSU data for the grid best fitting Colorado, i.e. “1979-2006 Temperature Time Series Latitude Range 37.5 to 42.5, Longitude Range -107.5 to -102.5 (from the MSU dataset)”. A guess as to why the MSU does not correlate well with the various surface records is that the MSU is weighted to the lower/mid troposphere, where Colorado is, so the microwave radiation picked up by the MSU includes not just air, but emissions from rocks, grass, and trees (yes, even bristlecones). Maybe the MSU experts have some better ideas.
Jessie Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory show is on now (truTV). He’s already interviewed a mystery scientist and Richard Lindzen. They’re taking AGW apart at the moment. But, I suspect he’ll put it back together at the end. Not sure I can stay up that late, though.
Driving in to Crystal River, FL, earlier this evening, it was 31F just north of town and 38F downtown. No UHI here, move along…
Wonderful post Dr. Keen, I have been wondering about some of that as I have a weather station set up here at home. I realize that it needs some site adjustment as it is a little close to some trees but for the most part it seems to be fairly accurate. I have noticed that the nearest NWS site to me Birmingham, Alabama is almost always 5 to 8 degrees warmer than I am. The official site is at the Birmingham airport. I expect that and that it is on the north edge of the down town area (about 2 miles and surrounded by heavy industry might have something to do with that. I am quite rural with the nearest town only about 4 miles away with a population of 3,000 and no industry not even a power plant. As you say I expect that there are enough private owned weather stations that might be used to do research scattered around the country in true rural areas.
Vboring, if the loss already of crops to the bio-fuel craze and the restrictions on certain fertilizers including CO2. The most prudent investment might just still be firearms and ammunition. If you can grow your own you might have to fight to keep it. The governments getting ready for warming has possibly prepared us to have a catastrophe if the cooling continues at the current rate.
By the way here in NE Alabama we are due to receive some of that white global warming later this week with near record low temps and possibly near record low high temps also. Also talking about record numbers of days below freezing temp with out break. the next couple of weeks will give most of us in the “deep south” about all the global warming we can stand.
Bill Derryberry
Good information and very nice graphic that clearly shows warming in Coal Creek from 1985 through 2003, and then a drastic cooling from 2003 to 2009 giving back 2/3 of the warming.
However, the writer uses “tipping point” to refer to the inflection in the graph at 2003. This usage, IMHO, may muddy the AGW discussion.
As used by the Alarmists, the “tipping point” is the point of no return. For example, when a boat rolls beyond a certain point, it will tip over and sink.
The Alarmists believe that human-generated greenhouse gasses cause excess warming, melting sea ice and uncovering open water which reflects less sunlight than ice. This, in turn, causes still more rapid warming in a vicious cycle. Their “tipping point” comes when so much ice has melted that no amount of reduction in greenhouse gas production can prevent further uncontrolled heating.
Skeptics have been saying (correctly) that we have never been near any kind AGW of “tipping point”.
A check of a GISS trend map for 1999 to 2009 shows an area of 0.5-1 degree Celcius reduction in temperature for much of mid west US. This well maintained and sited station appears to be agreeing at least roughly with what GISS says the temperature is doing in that location once all the adjustements etc have been made.
This particular 10 year decline is certainly not hidden, at least in GISS, and is quite obvious over a rather large area of North America, and is even stronger in Canada. Of course it happens to be offset by warming in other parts of the Globe.
Are the studies investigating the correlation of enviro variables & tree growth where they actually measure these next to the trees which are then cored?
Cooling and mentions of the IPCC…
http://www.theclimateconspiracy.com/?p=43
The above blog demonstrates, unequivocally (ha!), that using the same logic as the IPCC we can prove 8-9 years of recent cooling.
Excellent post, Dr. Keen.
Thanks, Dr. Keen, for the excellent records and reporting from Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado.
Unfortunately scientists have been trained with grant funds like Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits.
I personally watched this development in the space science community since 1960. Yet I had no idea the corruption was so widespread until the hacked e-mails exposed the Climategate scandal.
Best wishes to you and yours for the New Year!
Oliver K. Manuel
Meanwhile, in Al Gore’s home town, it was 9F this morning and we are supposed to get 1-3 inches of global warming on Thursday. Oh what fun it is …
I WANT MY GLOBAL WARMING BACK!!!
A really interesting poll in Canada, one question was:
Global warming is human induced, planet is in peril, agree?
And here in Manitoba/Saskatchewan only 37% agreed, lowest in the country. To put that is perspective a bit, these provinces are all about farming, and the farming is VERY weather dependent being so far north (they farm going north until they can’t anymore). Every farmer I know here is weather freak. My grandfather kept meticulous records of everything 50 years. A friend even has a temperature/humidity/wind/precipitation digital read out over his bed (forget mood lights or mirrors : ).
They also keep track of the weather in places the other giant grain regions of the world, as that affects prices. So any conversation about weather and warming tends to be pretty specific, they rattle of the warm and cool years (and wet/dry, frost dates etc etc). Oh, and they tend to go outside fairly regularly.
I suspect there is a bit of an rural urban thing going on here, where people in cities get the weather from the news (general is fine), where rural people need much more local and detailed information. So in the city you take the news people’s word for ‘hot year’ and ‘cold year’, where it is a farmer’s business to know things themselves. Interestingly the conclusion from most media here tends to be that the farm belt needs more education about climate, lol.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/01/04/12337176-sun.html
Human induced, planet is in peril?
Atlantic 49%
Quebec 69%
Ontario 51%
Man./Sask. 37%
Alberta 40%
B.C. 51%
Highlights on the Show…January 4 – 8, 2010 | Thom Hartmann
… Chance to Save Humanity” Thom speaks with Dr. James Hansen about his new book
http://www.thomhartmann.com/2010/01/04/highlights-on-the-show-january-4-8-2010/
This is ground zero for liberals and the liberal movement, they should be taking callers. hint, hint
OT, it’s now official, on Channel 10 news (Seriously pro-AGW TV channel) the last decade was the warmest on record. For Australia, it was, on average (he he he), 0.9c above the average. LOL
Farenheit?
Catch up with the world.
The Australian BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) statement that was linked to the above story from pat (17:35:01) can be found here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20100105.shtml
Something tells me that the BoM is lining up the stats for the Government to fight the Aussie ETS anew this year.
I love the way that they say it is a drier year than the average, but the decadal rainfall averages have, if anything, been trending slighty upwards since 1900. Just eye-balling the annual rainfall data it is obvious there is stuff all trend in there. Drier than what exactly? 2009 looks wetter than more than half the preceding years by simply laying a straight edge over the graph … yes, I was an engineer in my younger days. If it takes me half a second to figure that out, what makes them think they can peddle this blatently incorrect illusion?
Anyway, it seems according to the Labor politicians that the Aussie BoM has now proved global warming beyond a doubt… how I would love to see a station-by-station Darwin style analysis to show how cooked the books probably are.
Ooops I missed that they said it was drier in the southeast mainland… what blatant cherry picking.
Just for grins I pulled a little data from the links Dr. Keen gave me above.
I have not had time to do any controls for bad site placement, but these 38 automated weather stations are generally high quality automated stations costing $500 and up, a few are professional stations run by Colorado Dept of Health.
Here are the high, low and average temperatures reported for today Jan 4, 2010 over an area of Northwest Denver Metro area covering the communities of :
Arvada, Broomfield, Superior, Louisville and Lafayette.
This encompasses mostly rolling foot hills and mixed suburban residential areas and some areas flanked by large areas of open space prairie and large open lots. These communities cover an area of about 14 miles north to south and 12 miles wide.
station ID Lat Long Hi Lo AV
KCOARVAD6 39.83, -105.14 42.2 10.9 23.9
KCOARVAD10 39.81, -105.18 42.3 15.1 26.9
KCOARVAD12 39.82, -105.07 42.3 16.2 26.9
KCOARVAD15 39.81, -105.13 41.8 13.4 26.3
KCOARVAD17 39.82, -105.15 40.1 15.8 26.6
KCOARVAD22 39.79, -105.11 45.1 13.7 27.8
KCOGOLDE26 39.84, -105.22 39.4 18.9 29.4
KCOARVAD25 39.79, -105.14 45.1 12.4 26.2
MC8064 39.82, -105.18 – – --
MCO109 39.87, -105.24 38.0 22.0 29.0
MARVDA 39.80, -105.10 42.0 11.0 27.7
KCOBROOM4 39.93, -105.11 46.5 15.6 26.7
KCOBROOM15 39.92, -105.04 39.8 18.1 27.5
KCOBROOM7 39.97, -105.05 37.0 17.3 26.8
KCOBROOM9 39.94, -105.08 39.9 19.9 28.5
KCOBROOM10 39.94, -105.08 42.8 19.0 30.9
KCOBROOM20 39.89, -105.10 40.1 12.0 24.4
MAP744 39.88, -105.09 40.0 16.0 25.9
MRFN 39.91, -105.19 38.0 22.0 30.6
KCOLAFAY1 40.00, -105.14 36.4 20.7 28.3
KCOLAFAY7 40.06, -105.11 37.8 11.9 24.4
KCOLAFAY9 40.01, -105.08 21.8 15.6 18.7
KCOLAFAY11 40.06, -105.12 43.3 15.7 26.6
KCOLAFAY12 40.02, -105.12 37.0 8.8 17.8
KCOLAFAY13 39.96, -105.10 35.1 11.3 21.7
MCO018 39.98, -105.10 – – –
MD3562 39.98, -105.10 35.0 11.0 21.7
KCOLOUIS3 39.96, -105.16 39.1 16.1 25.5
KCOLOUIS9 39.98, -105.15 41.5 19.8 29.4
MC7188 39.98, -105.14 39.0 14.0 24.9
MLEWC2 39.99, -105.15 45.0 20.0 20.2
MC2809 39.98, -105.11 39.0 11.0 23.4
MC2474 39.98, -105.14 – – –
KCOSUPER3 39.92, -105.16 41.7 18.2 28.1
KCOSUPER4 39.92, -105.16 37.8 22.9 29.1
KCOLOUIS7 39.94, -105.14 45.7 23.7 32.4
KCOSUPER7 39.93, -105.16 68.0 -4.0 28.2
KCOSUPER8 39.95, -105.18 44.6 15.9 25.9
Reported High temperatures range from 68.0 F to 21.8 F and lows range from 23.7 F to -4.0 F. Computed average temperatures range from 32.4 F to 17.8 F.
Instrumental accuracy is about +/- 1 deg F for the Davis Vantage Pro2 at 80 deg F according to the spec sheet, with greater errors at temperatures higher and lower than 80 deg F.
I know these are not “professional’ Stevenson screens, and certainly I have not had the opportunity to do any site audits. But this gives a crude snapshot of temperature variations over a relatively small metropolitan area on a day that had relatively stable weather (no frontal passages, or extreme winds etc.) Elevation here is approximately 5800 ft give or take about 100 ft, compared to the station Dr. Keen monitors in Coal Creek Canyon approximately 20 miles west of this metro suburban area.
Larry
To Patrick.
And yet here in sub-tropical Brisbane I felt cold during the day this winter. Usually I only feel cold at night.
Right now it is summer, and we have had weeks of rain and the temperatures are in the twenties.
I slept with my windows closed last night!
Ira (20:34:53) :
…
Skeptics have been saying (correctly) that we have never been near any kind AGW of “tipping point”.
Here is how I used to argue with alarmists.
Their evidence is showing we either have passed a tipping point or will inevitably do so. There is no debate on that. The permafrost is melting, releasing methane and other forms of long-trapped carbon. The Arctic sea ice is melting, exposing dark sea that will soak up the Sun’s rays, leading to more melting. The IPCC report (per Wikipedia) shows that even if we shut down all human emissions tomorrow, there will still be warming for centuries to come.
The one time I was arguing, National Geographic Channel was showing Six Degrees Could Change The World. So what? Everything is showing we will get those 6 degrees Celsius eventually. Read the Wikipedia IPCC entries! We cannot stop it, all we can hope to alter is how fast we will get there, and we will likely get past that mark as well. What they are showing will happen, period. Those shows are a preview, they are not something we can avoid.
Now then, for one thing, we humans want to believe we are the top product of evolution. Fine then, let’s prove it. Adapt or die. The changes will take generations, centuries. We have plenty of time to adapt. Move away from coastal areas we shouldn’t be living in anyway, too prone to hurricanes etc. Prepare for the vicious wild weather with more storm-resistant housing. There are many things we can do. Which will cost money. So why should we waste it trying to stop what we can’t prevent?
Besides, carbon emissions will settle themselves out. As the fossil reserves run down and get more expensive the alternatives will see widespread deployment, our technology will improve in efficiency regardless, because we like cheap stuff that runs cheap. Just basic human nature. Spend the money there, lower the price tipping points with technological improvements, that’ll get the emissions down faster.
For the final thing, think of the time scale. Per the IPCC, we will have warming for many generations to come. Many many generations. Could go on for millenia. We will have plenty of time to adapt, to change. When the rise finally levels off and the temperature stabilizes, to our descendants that will be what is normal to them. It will be what humans have adapted to after all that warming the IPCC considers inevitable. Ask yourself, would they want to go back? This is their normal, what they are used to. Even if they could cool the Earth down, would they? Would they want to return to the mythological cold times of their primitive ancient ancestors? If the world started cooling down naturally, would they allow it, or fight it?
It was fun demolishing their arguments for carbon limiting, Kyoto and even more draconian schemes, and carbon sequestering etc, by pointing out what their own “science” was telling them would happen, away from the shrill alarmists promising doom tomorrow. For those who believe Climategate means nothing, the science is settled, they refuse to consider other research and scientific arguments, that are absolutely convinced their frostbite is proof of global warming… At least you can convince them the carbon schemes are worthless, using their own accepted much-prized and much-hyped science.