The December 2009 and year 2009 University of Alabama at Huntsville lower tropospheric MSU temperature data is available. Thanks to Phillip Gentry and John Christy for alerting us to these figures]. I have several comments following the figures.
This data shows why the focus needs to be on the regional scale and that a global average is not of much use in describing weather that all of us experience.
The news media seem to continue to avoid this perspective. For example, in the article Snow, ice and the bigger picture
excerpts read
“Rather than seeking vindication or catastrophe in this cold snap, now is a good time to remind ourselves that weather, like death and taxes, will always be with us. Spectacular regional swings in temperature and precipitation, sometimes lasting for months, often emerge from the natural jostlings of atmosphere and ocean. By themselves, none of these prove or disprove a human role in climate change.”
“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”
“If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.”
“Handy as it is, the AO describes more than it explains. Forecasters still don’t know exactly what sends the AO into one mode or the other, just as the birth of an El Niño is easier to spot than to predict.”
See also the post at Dot Earth by Andy Revkin titled Cold Arctic Pressure Pattern Nearly Off Chart
The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.
The article concludes with the text
“If this winter tells us anything, it’s that we’ll have to remain on guard for familiar weather risks as well as the evolving ones brought by climate change.”
This admission implicitly recognizes the focus on the reduction of vulnerability that we wrote about in our paper
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
The media, policymakers and others should recognize this evidence of our incomplete understanding of the climate system. We will continue to have surprises such as we have seen this winter.
Smokey (05:01:00) :
Cim:
“Is this discussion good enough”
No. Anyone can do “updates”. Let’s look at the original IPCC predictions:
Tom P (05:57:44) :
Your plots are rather old. Here’s the up-to-date comparison:
Tom P what part of “Anyone can do “updates” didn’t you understand?
BBC news channel just interviewed a member of the MET Office. Being very defensive he stated that their seasonal forecasting is not to be taken too seriously, and that it is the malicious media that keep finding them on their web site and making a big deal about them.
WELL STOP MAKING THEM THEN!
Dan Lee (06:12:29)
“Yes, the Green goal of making energy so expensive that only the rich can afford it is almost within our grasp.”
I agree with that statement but, I have another take on it that has probably beeen posted by someone else but , I have yet to see it. My thought is that Al Gore and his friends aren’t making any money off of oil so they come up with a scenerio where they can tax the emmisions. Creating panic and coming up with rediculous targets for emmisions that no one will be able to adhere to and taxing those emmisions will reap billions in profits for those involved. It has been widely reported already how much Gore has made from this already. THEY DON’T WANT US TO STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS!
By the way, has anyone seen the Samsung commercial with some pencil necked geek talking about how the ice is melting and we must take action or else? I’ve seen it several times on my Samsung tv! Had I known that they helduch a position I would have bought a different brand. No more Samsung for me.
Media bias aside, as I look at the chart of temperatures, the question comes to mind “Why was 1998 so darn warm?”. Yes we had a strong El Nino but we had similarly strong El Nino’s before will much less effect. I have seen the suggestion that the Earth was hit with a gamma ray burst in late ’97 and that this is the true driver of the exceptional warmth in ’98. Anyone know any more about this theory?
I have been following Svensmark’s research. This cold is no surprise to me at all. It is roughly three years since the sun went quiet and cosmic rays are reaching all time highs for the satellite era. A cooling is exactly what Svensmark’s research predicts…
SandyInDerby (08:34:01) :
None of Smokey’s plots included the last eighteen months of temperature data – they were hardly “updates”.
I notice Revkin uncritically repeats the “balance” fallacy: “When it’s freezing where you sit, it’s hard to keep in mind that it may be extraordinarily warm elsewhere, as Joe Romm pointed out today.”
It is absolutely untrue that cold weather is created by or creates warm weather elsewhere. In fact people who read this blog know that the global average temperature measured by satellite bounces up and down all the time. The current cold weather here is global cooling for as long as it lasts. If the predicted El Nino heats up, then we will have global warming for a while. Since El Nino can last for many months, we can have global warming for months unbalanced by any global cooling. Some people call that “climate change” (euphemism for global warming) but it’s just weather and corresponding climate change.
Tom P (09:08:20) :
SandyInDerby (08:34:01) :
None of Smokey’s plots included the last eighteen months of temperature data – they were hardly “updates”
That’s the point Tom. Smokey tells us how it was.
They predicted. They got it wrong.
Afterwards they changed their prediction. No prizes.
Does this esteemed international audience know about the musical play “The Music Man”? In this play, a con artist comes to town, creates a problem that doesn’t exist, sells the solution to the non-existent problem, Fails miserably, and still walks away with the girl because he’s so darned irresistible and he plays to people’s egos. This is what we’re up against.
Shifting the discussion to regional vs. global is irrelevant to the dynamic of the discussion. This is yet another con like the dot.com bubble, the stock swap bubble, the real estate bubble, etc.
“The obvious response to these claims is that if we cannot predict weather features such as the Arctic oscillation or an El Niño under current climate, how can anyone credibly claim we have predictive skill decades into the future from both natural and human caused climate forcings? The short answer is that they cannot.
Here is a thought experiment –
You have a bucket half full of water. It is sitting under a faucet that drips. There is a hole in the bucket. In the water in the bucket are small bits of solid material – lots of them of different sizes, contours and smoothness. You have an agitator that keeps the water in the bucket moving around slowly.
To start out you have the rate of water dripping into the bucket equaling the net rate leaving through the hole. Because there are bits of material floating around, the hole can be partially blocked from time to time to varying degrees, so the water level will rise at unpredictable intervals (short term) and fall (when completely unblocked) at unpredictable intervals. But because this bucket has existed for as long as anyone can remember (and prior to our own observations), and we can see traces of different water levels on the side, there is generally agreed consensus that the net inflow and the net outflow are the same.
There are two ways to alter the balance – one is to increase/decrease the flow out of the faucet. The other is to introduce/remove the bits of matter suspended in the water.
If you change either variable, you will not improve your ability to predict when water rises will occur or falls. But you can be reasonably confident (in the long run) that (in the case of adding matter and/or increasing the drip rate) that you will get a continuous rise in the water level.
Will it over flow? We don’t know that because the change in water pressure will become a variable and may or may not affect the efficacy of matter obstructing the hole (assumed to be at the bottom of the bucket).
Point is that AGW can defend claims of general long term net effects (given properly stated assumptions) without having to be predictive in the short term.
That is one thing that makes debating AGW claims very difficult. It also undermines a great deal of the extreme alarmist claims (claims that I, as a luke warmer, find indefensible and counterproductive).
Midwest Mark (07:34:31) :
And this from today’s Columbus Dispatch (by AP reporter Malcom Ritter)…When questioned about the unusually cold weather the northern hemisphere is experiencing lately, scientist (and AGW supporter) Gerald Meehl provided the old It’s-not-climate-it’s-weather response:
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”
If the UK and northern Europe were suffering from a heat wave in the middle of winter, Meehl would be singing a different tune. Meehl is an idiot.
Tom P (09:08:20) :
SandyInDerby (08:34:01) :
None of Smokey’s plots included the last eighteen months of temperature data – they were hardly “updates”.
That’s the point now you understand.
Richard deSousa (09:52:01) :
If AGW is happening as represented, then you would see a diminishing frequency of record lows, as he has stated. But you must also have an increasing frequency of record highs (something he doesn’t state but should – if he is a scientist then there is no need to be defensive and paint only half of the picture).
Anyway, the data have yet to bear that out the “more highs, fewer lows” scenario, IMO, but maybe someone has data to prove me wrong.
“What’s different now is that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just harder to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.”
As always long on metaphors with no substance to substantiate the claims being made.
How the heck could they possibly know “that climate change is shifting the odds towards record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters”? That’s quite the potent claim especially in light of a record-cold winter! How do they know the “odds” have “shifted”? That’s incredible! What magical science gives them that ability? Please do tell.
Again it looks like all too much soothsaying from climate model entrails. http://pathstoknowledge.net/?s=soothsaying
pwl
Phil’s Dad (09:33:02) :
“That’s the point Tom. Smokey tells us how it was.
They predicted. They got it wrong.
Afterwards they changed their prediction. No prizes.”
None of the predictions were made in the last 18 months. Current temperatures are close to IPCC predictions made 3, 9 and 15 years ago.
One thing that I’m not understanding (actually there’s a lot that I don’t understand) is how the rate of energy transfer from the CO2 molecule is affected by cold weather? I have assumed that that CO2 was storing energy over long periods – say on the order of weeks or months. This stored energy was then released slowly, on average, when the surrounding environment has a lower average energy causing an average and gradual increase in temps. Thinking about this a bit more this morning, now I wonder if this energy transfer is a more instantaneous phenomenon where the periodicity of energy gain and loss of the CO2 molecule is on the order of seconds. Anyone have insight on this question?
Here is the BBC playing the “weather isn’t climate” game again:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447262.stm
Well, for members of the general public, some of their other reports will chime better with their experience:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8449755.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2010/frozen_britain/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8449133.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447989.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8443684.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447873.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8446942.stm
(compares 1963 with 2010)
Yes, I too remember the UK winter(s) of 62 & 63 and the “long hot summer” of 1976.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8448399.stm
pwl (10:25:05) :
“That’s quite the potent claim especially in light of a record-cold winter!”
Hardly record-cold globally:
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9207/7jan10uahlt.png
Stefan (03:11:09) :
“The concept of global climate and globally averaged temperatures appears to have no practical use whatsoever in this day and age.
But maybe I’m just ignorant. Is there anything about climate change theory that’s resulted in practical useful results yet?
Even if global average temperatures continue to rise in the coming century, what will the weather in the UK be like? Will it be wetter and milder, or will there be more extreme variations? If you’re designing buildings, that’s a huge difference. How much insulation? How steep should the roof be? What wind gusts do you expect? Will energy be available continuously or intermittently? Do you have to worry about cooling the thing? Or can it be kept warm passively?
Really, please let them start talking about “climate chaos”. That’ll be the final nail in this as far as the majority of the public are concerned. We have the common sense to know that once it’s “chaos”, that means nobody knows.”
I agree with you, the concept of climate is a strange abstract construct. Climate/weather can only be experienced by an observer at a specific location on Earth, at the ever moving instant of time which we call now.
We can look at the history of events which when averaged, make Global Average Climate, but because of deterministic chaos, our climate system cannot be forecast with any degree of certainty beyond a few days. Linear trens provide no information and the whole debate tends to degenerate to a ‘cherry picking’ debacle, where both sides can prove they are ‘right’ by picking the right time periods for comparison.
Until a full understanding of the different processes which comprise our climate system is achieved, along with the knowledge of how the effect each other, little progress will be made. We also need to improve the data granularity for all climate metrics in all four dimensions, rather than sticking a finger in the air to try and extrapolate the data as happens currently. This is especially important for the polar regions and the equator, at it is from here that climate is driven – along with, of course. the sun.
Tom P (10:39:52),
There is something fishy about throwing out 3, 9 and 15 years without giving the citation.
Let’s look at the accuracy of the IPCC, and similar global warming predictions that turned out to be flat wrong:
clickA
clickB
clickC
clickD
Notice a pattern?
First, all of the predictions assume a steadily warming planet. Not one of them allows for the possibility of flat or cooling temperatures. They are all saying there is no possibility of that happening.
The IPCC’s predictions are based on computer climate models — not one of which was able to predict the flat to declining temperatures over most of the past decade. All the models failed. Every one of them.
The best evidence that a new hypothesis is correct is its ability to accurately predict future events. Einstein’s hypothesis, for example, accurately predicted the orbit of Mercury; something previous hypotheses were unable to do.
The IPCC’s predictions have failed miserably. That means their models are wrong. But since the IPCC is composed of 100% political appointees, whose highly paid jobs depend on their predicting catastrophic global warming, then that is the prediction they will make. As we see from all the evidence, the IPCC is not permitted to predict that global temperatures will fall. And it is a travesty.
Stephen Wilde: ‘In contrast over time during a positive AO the smaller high pressure systems at the poles will contract to the extent that they increase the size of the dry regions between the mid latitude depression tracks and the equatorial air masses (much of the period 1975 to 2000).’
Is this the cause of the current ‘greening’ of the Sahara do you think, Stephen.
Also, can you explain why an inactive sun allows slower heat loss from the upper atmosphere? Sorry, I’m sure you’ve done so ad nauseam, but I missed it.
And somehow it’s more interesting now my normally mild and green Normandy countryside is an Arctic tundra-like wasteland, sub-zero for a week and snowing hard again as I write.
Just a little stat remainder. The probability of being in the lower half of a prediction for 10 consecutive years is: 0.5 power 10 = 0.001.
There is only a 0.1% chance of being in the lower half for 10 consecutive years!!!!
Wake up.
MET Office Games with Temperature
6 January 2010 In most winters, and certainly those in the last 20 years or so, our winds normally come from the south-west. This means air travels over the relatively warm Atlantic and we get mild conditions in the UK. However, over the past three weeks the Atlantic air has been ‘blocked’ and cold air has been flowing down from the Arctic or the cold winter landmass of Europe.
Why the cold weather?
The low temperatures in the UK have also been accompanied by snow. This is because areas of low pressure have been running in from the north-east, tracking across the North Sea and picking up moisture along the way, which falls as snow. However, it is not cold everywhere in the world. North-east America, Canada, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and south-west Asia have all seen temperatures above normal – in many places by more than 5 °C, and in parts of northern Canada, by more than 10 °C.
Fig 1. The map shows that while it has been cold in Northern Europe, other parts of the world have seen above average temperatures.
Is it colder than average?
What does this say about climate change?
Source:MET Office UK
Comment
MET Office UK pretends the Cold is just a UK anomaly. The MET Office temperature map is entirely disingenuous when the US temperature data and a recent new record map are viewed. The MET Office shows North East US temperatures above normal while the the US National Weather Service is reporting record new minimum daily low temperatures and record new minimum daily high temperatures! Many new minimum lows (coldest nights) and many new minimum highs (coldest days) in the US have been set in the last few weeks.
The MET Office is very clever in their use of a non-linear temperature scale to exaggerate their invented temperature anomalies.
Record Events for Sat Jan 2, 2010 through Fri Jan 8, 2010
Total Records:
2450
Rainfall:
304
Snowfall:
761
High Temperatures:
27
Low Temperatures:
528
Lowest Max Temperatures:
751
Highest Min Temperatures:
79
Why the cold weather? Why the MET Office Invention?
Tom P (10:39:52) :
Phil’s Dad (09:33:02) :
“That’s the point Tom. Smokey tells us how it was.
They predicted. They got it wrong.
Afterwards they changed their prediction. No prizes.”
None of the predictions were made in the last 18 months. Current temperatures are close to IPCC predictions made 3, 9 and 15 years ago.
Tom P are you being deliberably obtuse?
What Smokey is saying is that the original predictions were way off the mark. So they cannot predict 3, 9 and 15 years into the future (the Met Office can’t predict 6 months into the future as they have been at pains to point out during the recent cold spell).
“!Doug S (10:43:27) :
One thing that I’m not understanding (actually there’s a lot that I don’t understand) is how the rate of energy transfer from the CO2 molecule is affected by cold weather? I have assumed that that CO2 was storing energy over long periods – say on the order of weeks or months.”
Try this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/16/nasa-says-airs-satellite-data-shows-positive-water-vapor-feedback/
Max CO2 distribution on the Northern hemisphere is where we’re having the current cold weather.