While the press is hyperventilating over NASA GISS recent announcement of the “Hottest Decade Ever“, it pays to keep in mind what happened the last two years of the past decade.
According to NCDC, 2009 temperatures in the US (53.13F) were the 33rd warmest and very close to the long term mean of 52.86F.
Generated from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Since 1998, according to NCDC’s own figures, temperatures in the US have been dropping at a rate of more than 10 degrees F per century.
Generated from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
For 2009, all regions of the US were normal or below normal except for the southwest and Florida.
Temperatures in Alaska were also slightly below the long term mean. Three of the last four years have seen below normal temperatures in Alaska.
A few fond memories from 2009 :
Americans suffer record cold as temperatures plunge to -40 16th January 2009
Jul 28, 2009 Chicago Sees Coldest July In 67 Years
Aug 31, 2009 August Ends With Near-Record Cold
Oct 14, 2009 October Cold Snap Sets 82-Year Record
And my personal favorite:
From: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider <shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Myles Allen <allen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, peter stott <peter.stott@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, “Philip D. Jones” <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Benjamin Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Hansen <jhansen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even
h/t to Steve Goddard
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Is the first chart saying that the average year-round temperature for the US is 53 deg? Or is it just saying that the average of all temperature-monitoring posts for the year is 53 degrees?
Not important. I’m just curious.
Temperature trends at Northern Hemisphere, 23.5-90N:
CRU+HadSST
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_23.5-90N_n_2000:2009a.png
MSU
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itlt_0-360E_23.5-90N_n_2000:2009a.png
Both datasets are heading down. You can run, but you will only die sweated, NASA guys.
Bunk. If you look at the top chart, it seems to have 1998 as the highest temperature. So you arbitrarily take that as the starting point, and basically make a trend line on 10 data points? Not to mention the fact that the mean in the second graph of course is quite a bit higher than in the overall graph. As such, using the same black bar for this, and not putting the second graph into context of the first one is extremely misleading. A “trick”, if you will.
in holland 2009 must have been also a cooler year , although statistics may tell a different story and therefor should be considered questionable , januari and december 2009 were both months with substantial lower temperatures than usual whilst the summer was a very cool one , with in the centre of holland only one day with temperatures above 30 degrees celsius , which became a very regular phenomenon in the last decade of the nineties ,counting 5 to 15 days each summer with temperatures over 30 degrees celsius . Is not the IPCC not warning for more extremes , whilst exactly the opposite is happening ?
Okay there may be excuse in this case , the mountains disappeared from Holland , so this must have been created by the missing fohn-winds and is it therefor not unrealistic to reduce the canadian northern territory stations to one point of measure famous for its fohn-winds ?
Nowadays the best example of the strong believers here is demonstrated by the lack of temperature-registrations for the United States on television here in Holland once the temperature is falling below . Then the temperature is reading 0. Why tell the truth , which in this case is so easy , when you are able to fool the public , showing the lack of respect and the dogmatic fanatism .
Since real climate is a function of things like altitude, latitude, and distance from the ocean (yes, check the definitions of things like ‘desert climate’ and ‘mediterranean climate’ and ‘temperate zone climate’…) that means that the “30 year average of weather” used by the AGW guys is no more climate than a “10 year average of weather”.
So I’m quite happy to say that there is a definite strong cooling trend underway. Heck, if they can ignore 60 year cycles like the PDO and 80 year and even 176 year cycles of solar output, and, for that matter, the 1500 year Bond Event Cycles, then so can I.
Filter with 30 years, you can not see a cycle longer than that. (Heck, even a 20 year cycle can look a lot like noise or a mistaken trend). So once you’ve decided to blow off all the really interesting long cycles of weather, what’s one more? In fact, the faster response is more useful for things like crop planning and ski trips…
So we’re headed down, and harder than we had been headed up. Give it another 20 years and this cooling 1/2 cycle ought to be taking a break (if it is PDO related… I don’t want to think about a Maunder event… and a Bond Event, well, we ARE just about due for one, but we don’t want to go there… that cycle leads to WW III from starvation… The last one was The Dark Ages and started about 530 – 540 AD. Add the nominal 1470 years of a Bond event and you get 2000 – 2010 AD. Gee, just about the time temperatures started falling… and the Sun went very very quiet… but the error band on that 1470 can add a decade or three… )
This posting:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/
has a couple of my comments but mostly just collected together some details from Wiki as the Wiki Langoliers started to erase the MWP, LIA, and everything else interesting… so I grabbed what I could still find and stuck it there. Needs cleanup, but does give you an idea about things like “The Iron Age Cold Period” and other “pessimums”…
I’m still holding out hope that all that ocean heat (currently driving our global Lava Lamp at extreme speeds moving all that ocean heat to the poles to dump at high rates) will keep the place warm for the rest of my lifetime. Toss in a short solar cycle recovery and we might just have a “normal” if cold winter for a decade or three.
Well, I can always hope…
FWIW, I think you can use a “loopy jet stream” vs a flat one as an indicator of how much heat differential there is between the tropical oceans and the cold poles. So we’re getting darned cold poles, and heat is being dumped big time, now you have a larger thermal gradient between equator and poles to drive interesting air flows for a while. Thus the frozen Canadian Express and Siberian Express dumping cold all over, yet more warmth running up the oceans to the poles to get frozen and return.
I’d give it a decade of that before we cool the oceans enough to start getting Real Cold… So just hope the last sunspots are a sign of things to come…
(And yes, I think the sun is the driver of our climate on a long term macro scale, with short term waffles caused by ‘ringing’ of misc fluid systems…)
Oh, and take a nice look at that chart. Notice that the GIStemp baseline is set at the bottom of that blue dip… 1950-1980
Paid weather commentators in New Zealand are dismayed that the summer there seems to have gone, when late Jan and most of Feb are usually the best months to enjoy outdoor stuff. Latest survey in NZ’s Herald newspaper says only 25% of respondents to the simple yes/no survey believe that the planet is warming.
We have a new celebrity:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
Freezing rain finally cleared our roofs last night despite a January ‘thaw’. Freezing fog had kept us cooler for a week or more than the forecast and below freezing.
While like the 1970’s just a tad cooler.
And yet, Jim Hansen over at RealClimate claims that for the world as a whole, 2009 is the second hottest year in 130 years. What’s up with that?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/
The earth is cooling. The next decade will be much colder than normal. All funding should be withheld from NASA until there is a full explanation of this fraud.
I have a link I keep bookmarked about NASA GISS.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/14/the-evolution-of-the-giss-temperature-product/
There is a reason why NASA GISS choose “hottest decade ever”, even though the previous link already shows they purposefully adjusted temperatures up meaning the hottest ever is likely a purposeful lie. With all the press about being too cold, this was to distract people and try to keep the agenda focused on cash cow that is global warming. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
To Wouter: There is a reason why we like to start with 1998. It is the same tactic the AGW crowd uses of taking a very low temperature as a starting point and saying “see it is getting warmer!” So two can play that game. “See it is getting cooler!” If you condemn this, you must also condemn when the AGW crowd does it as well.
**************
E.M.Smith (04:13:07) :
Since real climate is a function of things like altitude, latitude, and distance from the ocean (yes, check the definitions of things like ‘desert climate’ and ‘mediterranean climate’ and ‘temperate zone climate’…) that means that the “30 year average of weather” used by the AGW guys is no more climate than a “10 year average of weather”.
***************
And that’s exactly why I’ve been wondering lately why the focus on temperature? The heat capacity of air changes with humidity and the amount of heat (internal energy) in a unit volume of air varies with altitude. It is like a case of comparing an almost infinite variety of fruits with one another. The focus should be on the total energy and energy balance of the Earth system defined in some appropriate manner. The rest would take care of itself.
Well, well, well. New study about the reliability of surface temperature trends over the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that ““the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures.”
Oops: “artificial negative bias in maximum temperatures”.
Sanity check: “bwahahahaha”
Thanks for playing.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf
Oh the expression climate change. Will the Sahara become a high altitude forrest? Or will it not change?
Global warming as a phrase didn’t work out. Climate change is not working. I notice a few alarmists are now hammering on pollution more aggressively. None have done anything about the 75% of the people in India and China that cook and heat on wood and coal. …or other trash and waste.
Wouter (03:45:45),
A ‘trick’? Then let’s forget 1998. We’ll start 5 years later: click
Or, let’s look at only December temperatures – going all the way back to 1928: click. Where’s that runaway global warming? It’s a travesty that we can’t find it.
I could provide twenty similar charts, but some folks have too much invested in their belief that CO2 will cause climate catastrophe to accept the fact that the planet is going through one of its normal, natural cycles – and neither CO2 nor human activity have much to do with it.
Here’s the hero of the alarmist contingent, making one of his hilarious predictions: click
The claim that CO2 will cause catastrophic AGW is being debunked by planet Earth. Who are you to say Gaia is wrong?
Here we have a weatherman providing a recap of weather incidents and pretending the the US is the whole world.
The author states –
“According to NCDC, 2009 temperatures in the US (53.13F) were the 33rd warmest and very close to the long term mean of 52.86F.”
So is this an extreme winter or an average winter? And if temperatures have to drop at 10 degees per century for 12 years to reach average why do so many commentators say “where is the warming?”
Wouter – try reading the title of the post before leaping to your conclusions.
The graphs made sense to me and seem perfectly readable.
I suspect your irritation is that the last decade has not warmed as much as was expected or indeed predicted.
Maybe you will like the report on possible reasons why on Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100119112050.htm
Hide the decline.
CO2 was at 400 ppm in 1942. It has also fallen since then.
400 ppm in a post on a warmist blog will be enough to get the post deleted.
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
Welcome to the warmists! It is great to see them posting stuff and hear their arguments.
KSW – like Wouter, why not read the title before posting? This post is about the USA and not the world – or have I read yours wrong?
Anyway keep it coming – it is really good to know what you think.
Well, the last two days it has been warm in Sydney, inner west. Yesterday (Friday) was fairly normal for summer, 36c, but reported as a “scorcher”. Today (Saturday) it was 43c where I am, it was hot OK, but dry with it, ~20% humidity. Now it is down to less than ~24c, but humidity at ~75%, sticky. It”ll be like this for a week. No fires of any significance.
Past midsummer now here in Australia and a cool one too, again, like last year.
Mind you, I still find it remarkable that some people accept that one thermometer, near an airfield, is OK to determine average tempeartre for the entire continent of Antarctica.
“While the press is hyperventilating over NASA GISS recent announcement of the “Hottest Decade Ever“, it pays to keep in mind what happened the last two years of the past decade.”
The opening of this article is misleading.
‘Hottest Decade Ever’ refers to global temperature anomaly. ‘What happened the last two years’ refers to the US.
The US is not the globe, my dear American friends.
Department of Duh. It turns out that the Catlin expedition equipment failure was due to the battery. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7053637/Pen-Hadow-admits-battery-was-the-problem-on-Arctic-climate-change-expedition.html
Somehow I will take a pass on trusting anything from the fruitcakes who cannot get even that right. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Speaking of appropriate (or inappropriate) terminology, e.g., global warming, etc., is it not time to consider re-labelling the so-called “instrumental” record? Factors like the extraordinary reductions in numbers of measuring stations (both domestic and global), retrospective changes in the historic record, bizarre location and instrument condition problems all tend to suggest that we are not actually working with the “instrumental” record anymore.
What we are being presented with each month by NCDC/NASA/GISS/HADCRUT has been so massaged, modified, fudged, factored, tweaked and transmogrified as to no longer represent anything which might be logically referred to as the “instrumental” record.
I think it would represent, and portray, a far more accurate picture if we all began to refer to it as the “computational” record, vs., e.g., the satelite record. In this bizarre battleground of science vs. ideology, which words we use mean a lot.
why cant i find the figure released by giss for global average for 2009?
i thought i would find it here!
Reading off the chart by eye, 37 years were warmer than 2008 and 2009