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
debreuil, your poll results just go to show what an uphill struggle we still have to educate people.
61% still believe in AGW.
“Didn’t you see the animated hockey stick graph? It proves runaway global cooling even more than Mann’s proved runaway global warming! We’re all going to freeze to death, sometime around 2020!”
Not to worry…there is a company named Holley that makes a thing called a ‘four barrel carburetor’. If you bolt one onto your car you’ll produce enough soot in a week to turn a small town black. It’s how we averted the ice-age in the 70’s. 😉
Lance, I applaud your efforts. What do you think about the disappearance of observing stations? As a person who is involved in data collection, does it not trouble you that there are far fewer stations ?
Dr. Keen,
I found this site http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?co1681
and they only have Coal Creek going back 15 years. And for anything past July 2009, it is provisional. How long until they make the information past July official? And do you know why they only go back 15 years on this site?
Deadman (04:42:01) : A general question: is anyone collating the averages of temperatures across the whole of a day? I have wondered what would give a truer depiction of temperature than (min+max)/2. Considering the most extreme case at the solstices, a day with a 70° to 40° range would indicate quite different things at the opposing solstices were one to average each hourly measurement.
Thank you for writing this Dr. Keen. Colorado has some of the best and most variant weather in the country, I love it. I came across an interesting UHI example recently. The Aspen Daily News ran a local piece declaring the temperature had risen 7°F from AWG. I retorted to the editor that was plain silly. Aspen is 1200′ higher than I am in elevation, and consistently reports temperatures higher than my location, when it should be 5-6°F cooler due to elevation. It is all cement, bricks and asphalt, not CO2.
Bill in Vigo (20:30:32) :
… 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.”
Truer words were never spoken. I am getting sick of breaking the ice in my stock tanks. I just hope this kills the fire ants. Maybe it is time to dig up all those nests and let the bugs freeze.
I understand a record number of guns were sold as soon as Obama took office and the stores have trouble keeping the ammo on the shelves. If Waxman has his way between the Cap and Trade bill and the Food Safety Enhancement Bill he will wipe out the US food supply with a double whammy. This is especially if we have a little Ice Age on to of the rest of the political insanity. I am sure Cargill and the rest of the grain traders are rubbing their hands with glee as they anticipate even more record earnings for 2010 and beyond.
“Cargill seemingly escaped the economic downturn in 2008 by reporting sales of over 83 billion Euros and record profits of over 2.5 billion Euros, its sixth straight year of record-breaking earnings….
“Cargill has gained control over huge swaths of the world’s agricultural system, and its ability to influence food prices is pushing millions of people around the world to the brink of starvation,” said Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter.”
Cargill is linked to human rights violations, including forced child labour… http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/world/europe/press/cargill-poses-threat-to-consumer-health-the-environment-and-human-rights
Cargill is the largest private corporation in the U.S. with over $71 billion in sales and is owned by the the Cargill-MacMillan families.
I sure hope more Americans are comparing the weather outside to the idiotic claims of “warming” in the mass media and are finally waking up. The record hits here on Anthony’s site and all the new names in the comments give me hope.
I’m curious as to whether the obvious “tipping” or switch point is similar to what Alaska experienced, and is in line with the PDA oscillation switch point.
An additional thought:
As I sit here waiting for the temperature to get above freezing so I can refill my stock tanks, I wonder how many southern farmers and people living in trailers are having to deal with frozen waterlines and pipes? The building codes here in mid North Carolina do not require waterlines to be buried very deep 6 to 8 inches no more than a foot if I recall correctly. Farm waterlines are often no deeper than 3 or 4 inches and I have seen them freeze on the two farms where I helped with the livestock when the owners got trapped in a “freak” snow storm fifteen years or so ago.
Frozen waterlines are a real wake up call that the temperatures are Ccccold.
Does anyone know the most efficient way to make CO2?
If it can warm up the atmosphere for us shouldn’t we be making it as fast as possible, 24 hours a day 7 days a week to get all the benifits it would bring?
Have a look at http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/no-conflict-between-big-freeze-and-climate-change-1858530.html
Those of you in Canada and Alaska will be pleased to learn from Dr. Dorling of East Anglia University, that it is warmer than usual in your neck of the woods.
Meanwhile on the sub tropical Natal coast, a month into what aught to be high summer, the light rain that began in early spring continues on a daily basis. A month after normal I have had no need to dig our giant fan out of the loft. Measured by nothing more sophisticated than my internal thermometer, this is the coolest spring and early summer by a long way, in the twenty years that I have lived in the same location.
John Sims (17:27:29) :
You could start by telling that person that if the Gulf Stream shut down, London would probably have roughly the same climate as Alaska. They are at the same latitude.
>>hotrod (00:24:52) :
The low correlation with ground truth is bothersome to me. Are you aware of any investigations into the possibility that they are seeing ground clutter temperatures rather than the lower troposphere air temperatures with the satellites ?
Larry
REPLY>>Larry, maybe Roy Spencer has some ideas on this!
>>juanslayton (03:43:48) :
Still suspicious of the apparent step change in temperature in ‘99 coinciding with the station location change. It the temp rise is an artifact of the location change, would a downward adjustment improve the correlation with MSU?
…Also wondering about the sudden downward trend in 2004 coinciding with the change from min-max to MMTS measurement. Do these instrument changes generally agree without adjustment?
REPLY>>Hi John, here’s some details of location, etc. There was no change of any sort in 1999; the entry in the MMS is merely administrative.
SITE LOCATION: At the residence of Dr. Richard A. Keen, near the northwestern corner of Jefferson County, CO (T2S, R72W, Section 13), 105 23′ 27.6″ West, 39 52′ 36.2″ North (+/-0.4″), elevation 8950 feet. This location is approximately 10 miles SW of the Boulder WSO, and 11 miles NW of the Golden Post Office.
The site is two miles SE of the summit of Mt. Thorodin (elevation 10451 feet), and the ground slopes gently down to the southeast. The ground near the thermometer site is grass-covered with scattered aspen trees, with a lodgepole pine forest immediately to the north and open meadow to the south. All observations are for the midnight-to-midnight (Mountain Standard Time) climatological day until October 1, 2005; then 9 p.m. (2100) MST thereafter.
TEMPERATURE:
July 1, 1984 – Nov. 21, 1994: Taylor Model 185 Six’s (U-shaped) max-min thermometer, 5 feet above the ground, enclosed in a homemade 15x17x19-inch louvered shelter
Nov. 22, 1994 – Oct. 27, 2004: Standard NWS Thompson-mounted max-min thermometers, supplemented by Taylor Model 185 max-min thermometer (which is less susceptible to index shake-down by wind vibration), mounted 5 feet above the ground in a standard NWS cotton-region shelter thereafter. Nine months of overlapping data indicated the following differences between the NWS max-mins in the cotton-region shelter and the previous Taylor thermometer in the homemade system: average max 1.0 degree warmer (NWS minus Taylor); average min little difference.
Oct. 28, 2004 – present: NWS MMTS system 7 feet west of the cotton-region shelter, 6 feet above the ground. Three years of overlapping observations indicate a difference (MMTS minus cotton region max-min) of +1F for the max, 0F for the min.
From all this, an adjustment of -0.5F from the listed averages for 1994 to 2004 can be justified. What you see here is the unadjusted temperatures; the adjusted series doesn’t look much different, since the 0.5F difference is small compared to the interannual changes. The 2004 cooling occurred while the NWS max-mins in the cotton-region shelter were still recording.
>>Corey (07:19:30) :
Dr. Keen,
I found this site http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?co1681
and they only have Coal Creek going back 15 years. And for anything past July 2009, it is provisional. How long until they make the information past July official? And do you know why they only go back 15 years on this site?
REPLY>>I became a designated co-op site in 1994, so that’s when NCDC began archiving my data. I’ve offered the earlier data, but NCDC doesn’t retroactively add data. I have one missing month (August 2000, I think) due to a misplaced B-91, and they won’t even fill that month into the record (I do have the full record for that month)! It seems to take 6 to 8 months for the monthly record to get to NCDC, get checked & verified, and published in the CD monthly.
Ooops, correction to my previous post about the Coal Creek site:
Oct. 28, 2004 – present: NWS MMTS system 7 feet west of the cotton-region shelter, 6 feet above the ground. Three years of overlapping observations indicate a difference (MMTS minus cotton region max-min) of -1F (NOT +1F) for the max, 0F for the min.
Dr. Keen:
Got it. And thanks for your time.
John
Here in Boulder, CO ~ 10 miles north of Coal Creek we have not had any Chinook winds this winter! El Nino?
A previous poster mentioned their wild effect on the winter averages:
“Massive temperature differences can occur near the front range due to chinook winds here in Denver with the western metro area 20-30 degrees warmer than the official reporting sites on the eastern edge of the Denver area, and this might account for that high variability.”
Do we need these winds for their averaging modulation of the winter experience?
– Sometimes 120 mph roof rippers.
How can I print the animated graph as two separate graphs with and without “the decline” ?
pat (17:35:01) :
The Australian often has a comment form at the bottom of its stories and does not post any responses. It is quite frustrating. This time they removed the comment form after the story had been up for a while.
I posted a terse comment regarding the politicisation of the BoM. I pointed out that a simple eye-balling of the rainfall graph clearly showed that 2009 was an above-average rainfall year when viewing the entire data set, rather than a cherry-picked period. I suggested that therefore the title of that section should have read:
“2009 was an above average year for rainfall in Australia”
Needless to say nothing was posted. I told the BoM to stick to science and stay away from politics. But being an Australian (State) Government employee myself I know this is impossible. If our department is anything to go by, the top teirs of Australian Government departments are very politicised.
This is a sad thing indeed, but at least I have sensible buffers between myself and the “bulldust” from above.
>>Joe O’Laughlin (15:04:23) :
Here in Boulder, CO ~ 10 miles north of Coal Creek we have not had any Chinook winds this winter! El Nino?
REPLY>>
Hi Joe, well, we’ve had wind, but not the nice warm snow-eating Chinooks! Usually el Nino causes a split jet, with the southern subtropical jet dominating to dump snow on California, Texas, and freeze Florida, all of which has happened. But the higher latitudes, like North Dakota and new England, sit high and dry. But the cold PDO seems to have overridden that, and is bringing lots of nice chillies into the norther U.S. Joe d’Aleo on ICECAP.us has some nice articles about this.
>>tokyoboy (21:19:06) :
How can I print the animated graph as two separate graphs with and without “the decline” ?
REPLY>>Go to http://www.icecap.us and find this same article. Joe wasn’t able to get the animation to open on his site, so he posted the two charts separately.
Enjoy!
Thanks Richard.
Hi, you say in your article that the station record is 27 years. The NWSLI for CCCC2 says the paperwork for the station was submitted 5/13/1994. I was wondering where the data for the other years are taken from? Thanks.
The density of water at zero degrees centigrade is 0.9999 grams per cm. The density of ice at zero degree centigrade is 0.9150. In other words, 1 cc of ice weights only 0.91 gm and hence will displace only 0.915cc of water, when the ice is floating in water. When the ice float, almost the whole of body sinks below the surface of water, expect a small portion projecting above the surface. In the North Pole area, there is no land. The crust of the earth forms a huge bowl filled with seawater and a huge mass of ice floating in it just like an ice cube placed in a bowl of water. The volume of ice submerged below the ice may be almost 9 times more than the icecap which we observe above the surface of water. The molecules covering the underwater portion of the icecap absorb heat from the sea water in which it floats and melt into water. This is a continuous process happening round the clock, allover the year, irrespective of summer or winter. As I have explained in my booklet, the necessary energy is supplied by the earth itself. The role of the Sun which shines only for a limited period is too insignificant to have any impact on this process. As the density of water is more than that of ice, the volume of water generated by the melting of ice is less than that of water originally occupied by the ice block in the ratio 9999:9150. Therefore the sea level will actually come down because of the melting process. In practice, this may not happen because of the continuous deposition of snow in the polar region which will continuously push down the ice cap.
A lot has been talked about the rising of sea level because of Global warming. This is a misconception. In some places, the sea level goes up and in other places, it recedes. This phenomenon has been extensively discussed in Milner’s geography.
My contention can be tested by a simple experiment. Place ice cubes in a tumbler and fill it with water until the water overflows. Leave it until all the ice melts. Watch for any overflow of water during this process.
For my booklet GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH contact-waterfriendkks@gmail.com
waterfriend:
While posts like yours are allowed, they do little to enhance the stature of this site. You neglect the concept of thermal expansion as well as the water currently landlocked in Greenland and Antarctica. Now I don’t believe we are in for any big sea level rise, but fourth grade science explanations such as yours really do not belong here.
With names like jeez and waterfriend: would anyone believe what you people are saying? Give us your real names and if possible, add Ms. Mr., Dr. Prof etc. so we know how to evaluate your remarks.
The point made here was that there is again a tipping point observed where we can see that it is going to get colder. This happens to coincide with the tipping point observed on earth’s albedo – round at about the same time we noticed an increase in albedo. It means that we could well be on the way to global cooling – this is a real possibility and has many precedents in the past. Watch this space: global cooling is coming. It is real and it is not a hoax (like all this CO2 and carbon footprint nonsense)