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
Sponsored IT training links:
If you want to pass 642-533 exam quickly then download 70-236 questions and 70-293 answers for practice and pass exam on first try.
Yet the second warmest globally
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
What part of GLOBAL warming do you muppets not understand?
RE Smokey (19:00:01) :
Because that’s the journal that published Menne et al. If there’s no published reply, or if the paper that is supposed to arise from the surfacestations project is not published by, or even submitted to, a mainstream journal (E&E doesn’t count), it’s an admission that the whole project was a waste of time, and that the results did not come out as anticipated. When a company touts a big Phase III trial, they need to follow up with some kind of a report, even if the trial was a bust.
Responding to the Menne et al paper will be an excellent opportunity to crunch the numbers on CRN1,2.
I came upon this post from over a year ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/24/a-note-to-wuwt-readers/
Anthony, it would be great to have some kind of update on this. Are there now enough CRN1, 2 stations surveyed to do the analysis and include it in your response to the Menne et al paper? You could go one better and extend the time series further back than they did.
Connor,
Do you go outside much?
Knowledge of climate zones is key to interpreting data from a series of temperature sensors. Each climate zone reacts differently (IE is more or less sensitive) to atmospheric conditions. Too many sensors in one type of climate zone will screw the results.
A good laugh can be had by overlaying GISS’ fill-in temperatures with the gold standard climate zone map for the US. Instant realization that GISS is nonsense.
Here’s a recent post on the Menne matter that I’ve copied over from the Tips and Notes thread:
Steve Goddard (05:52:10) :
Connor,
Do you go outside much?
Perhaps he does and like me was yesterday able to go out and run on the track in a T-shirt (60ºF, normal high 37ºF)?
Here’s a recent post on the Menne matter that I’ve copied over from the Tips and Notes thread:
Mike Jonas (04:19:04) :
There could be at least two problems with the Menne paper.
They looked at 114 weather stations, and although it is not stated whether all 114 weather stations were poorly sited, it sounds from the wording as if some were poorly sited and some were well sited. ie, the number of poorly sited stations they looked at was either 114 or rather less.
The stats at surfacestations.org show that as at 16 Jul 09 (before the Menne paper) 1003 stations had been surveyed. Of these, 2% were class 1 and 8% class 2 – both acceptable standards. Classes 3, 4 and 5 (progressively worse-sited stations) were 22%, 61% and 8% respectively. That’s over 900 stations.
So the question is : how were the 114 stations selected, and why didn’t Menne et al simply run their numbers on the whole lot?
They used the stations classified here: “V1.05 USHCN Master Station List. (Note this file was downloaded from http://www.surfacestations.org in June 2009, but is indicated as having been updated on 04.18.2008. A more complete set of USHCN station classifications as referenced in Watts [2009] was not
available for general use at the time of this analysis).”
They used over 500 stations: “71 USHCN stations fall into the good exposure category, while 454 fall into the poor category”.
The reference to 114 stations is to the USCRN which consists of 114 stations at 107 locations which were used as a comparison for recent years.
So it appears that Mike Jonas misunderstood the paper.
Phil,
Do you live in Boston?
Deech56 (18:38:48) said:
Welcome Deech56. It is always good to have more people who try to correct misinformation.
To help me evaluate your self-proclaimed credibility can you point me to some instances where you corrected the misinformation that the IPCC and Pachauri have been spreading? Perhaps some instances where you corrected misinformation coming out of CRU? Perhaps some instances where you corrected the misinformation about M&M’s criticisms.
I must commend you also on not using an arrogant and contradictory name like Think or commonsense, although you could perhaps have used something like your real name.
Steve Goddard (08:22:33) :
Phil,
Do you live in Boston?
No although it was similarly warm there yesterday.
RE Richard Sharpe (08:24:54) :
Thanks for the welcome, but if you are referring to the IPCC glacier kerfuffle, someone already did that. Little more than an embarrassing typo. I really haven’t see “misinformation coming out of CRU”, to what were you referring?
I have posted in places that I believe those who said that the PCA choice used in MBH98 probably wasn’t the best, but I don’t have the expertise to correct the authors. Of course, the choice of PCA doesn’t make any difference and the newest papers by Mann, et al. make that a moot point.
I’m no expert, but the misinformation here is very easy to identify, and I have appreciated the efforts of people like Phil., Joel Shore, carrot eater, Ferdinand E. who have pointed out the major errors. Just trying to get at the truth.
And I try not to get too arrogant, and I do appreciate that the host’s allowing my posts. At “American Thinker” I only lasted 3 posts before I was banned. Had some good stuff there, too.
Put your telescope to your other eye and take a gander:
PS to Deech56:
Roger Knights, we’ve already established that the IPCC made an error, but that doesn’t distract from the basic fact that this post was misleading. Why he trendline in the post 1998 but not the post 1895 chart? Why the focus on US temperatures right after NASA released the global temperatures. It was the scientists who discovered the IPCC error, but I don’t see the regular posters here picking up on the points that, while technically true, were misleading. Just look at the couple of posts that refer to the year “1934”. And I would take the Rose’s story with a huge grain of salt. It’s not as if he has a particularly good track record.
You and I are debating a tangent from the thrust of this thread (not “post”), so your bringing it in amounts to a diversion. I challenged what you wrote:
I provided evidence that the IPCC must have been aware, from reviewer’s comments asking about the source of the 2035 claim, that the it was supported only by non-peer-reviewed material. Lal’s comment to David Rose indicated that they deliberately included it anyway. Therefore your response …
… amounts to an evasion. What kind of error? A typo? Or mendacity?
That remains to be seen. The thread by Romm you linked to quotes Lal’s denial. But that doesn’t refute Rose’s claim. Your assuming that it does reveals your bias. The rational course is to wait for Rose’s rebuttal. He may have Lal on tape. (I suspect his editors wouldn’t have let him print such a story unless he had Lal “on the record” in this way.)
Deech,
Interesting how the global warming community has decided to disown the US because its’ climate is not behaving properly. Same for Antarctica, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and now Siberia is acting up too.
Why won’t these areas warm up like the IPCC said they would? They are misbehaving badly.
Similarly, Alaska used to be a favorite poster child of alarmists, and now it has turned cold again.
Enjoy the remainder of El Nino, because “global” temperatures are going to come tumbling down in a couple of months. Look how much El Nino has diminished in the last 30 days.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/plots.php
Steve, I was referring to the Menne et al paper. Alarmists want to wrongfully use that paper to discredit Watts’ efforts with surfacestations.org and related criticisms of the USHCN and GHCN datasets underlying so much of the works supporting the IPCC reports.
RE Steve Goddard (21:31:03) :
Disown the US? The US temperatures are still counted along with the rest of the world. You might ask why our host wants to shift the focus from the whole world to one region and from the whole record to one period. You might want to ask why there were trendlines in the short-term chart and not the other. I thought you folks were skeptics.
RE D. Patterson (23:27:17) :
Wrongfully? What’s the purpose of the surfacestations project? What are the conclusions that are supposed to be discredited. The question should be whether differences in station quality or how readings are taken affect the surface temperature. Hate to tell you, but Manne, et al. answers this question.
RE Roger Knights (20:59:50) :
Don’t have time for a full answer, but Rose did misquote Dr. Latif as well. His bias is palpable.
Deech,
The only person being dishonest here is you. The United States has seen a serious cooling trend over the last decade and you refuse to see it. Europe is having it’s coldest winter in decades, but you are so attached to your ideology that you close your eyes and plug your ears.
No wonder only 28% of Americans care about global warming any more. People are struggling to keep warm through a bitter cold winter after a very cool summer, and they keep getting bombarded with stories about NASA claiming the “second warmest year ever.”
My investigations have led me to conclude that global warming is impossible. Common sense is that as the sun heats the water of the oceans and the temperatures rise, there must be some sort of a mechanism that switches the water-cooling system of earth on, if it gets too hot. Follow my thinking on these easy steps:
1) the higher the temp. of the oceans, the more water vapor rises to the atmosphere,
2) the more water vapor rises from the oceans, the more difference in air pressure, the more wind starts blowing
3) the more wind & warmth, the more evaporation of water (evaporation increasing by many times due to the wind factor),
4) the more evaporation of water the more humidity in the air (atmosphere)
5) the higher the humidity in the air, the more clouds can be formed
6) Svensmark’s theory: the more galactic cosmic rays (GCR), the more clouds are formed (if the humidity is available)
7) the more clouds appear, the more rain and snow and cooler weather,
8) the more clouds and overcast conditions, the more radiation from the sun is deflected from the earth,
9) The more radiation is deflected from earth, the cooler it gets.
10) This cooling puts a brake on the amount water vapor being produced. So now it is back to 1) and wait for heat to start same cycle again…
Now when I first considered this, I stood in amazement again. I remember thinking of the words in Isaiah 40:12-26.
I have been in many factories that have big (water) cooling plants, but I realised that earth itsself is a water cooling plant on a scale that you just cannot imagine. I also thought that my idea of seeing earth as a giant (water) cooling plant with a built-in thermostat must be pretty original….
But it was only soon after that I stumbled on a paper from someone who had already been there, done that …. well, God bless him for that!
i.e. if you want to prove something, you always do need at least two witnesses!
Look here (if you have the time):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
But note my step 6. The Svensmark theory holds that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) initiate cloud formation. I have not seen this, but apparently this has been proven in laboratory conditions. So the only real variability in global temperature could be caused by the amount of GCR reaching earth. In turn, this depends on the activity of the sun, i.e. the extent of the solar magnetic field exerted by the sun on the planetary system. We are now coming out of a period where this field was bigger and more GCR was bent away from earth. This is what “global warming”, mostly.
But apparently now the solar geomagnetic field is heading for an all time low.
Look here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/07/suns-magnetic-index-reaches-unprecedent-low-only-zero-could-be-lower-in-a-month-when-sunspots-became-more-active/
Note that in the first graph, if you look at the smoothed monthly values, there was a tipping point in 2003 (light blue line). I cannot ignore the significance of this. I noted similar tipping points elsewhere round about that same time, eg. in earth’s albedo. From 2003 the solar magnetic field has been going down. To me it seems for sure that we are now heading for a period of more cloudiness and hence a period of global cooling. If you look at the 3rd graph, it is likely that there wil be no sun spots visible by 2015. This is confirmed by the paper on global cooling by Easterbrook:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
In the 2nd graph of his presentation, Easterbrook projects global cooling into the future. These are the three lines that follow from the last warm period. If the cooling follows the top line we don’t have much to worry about and the weather will be similar to what we had in the previous (warm) period. However, indications are already that we have started following the trend of the 2nd line, i.e. cooling based on the 1880-1915 cooling. In that case it will be the coldest from 2015 to 2020 and the climate will be comparable to what it was in the fifties and sixties. I survived that time, so I guess we all will be fine, if this is the right trendline.
Note that with the third line, the projection stops somewhere after 2020. So if things go that way, we don’t know where it will end. Unfortunately, earth does not have a heater with a thermostat that switches on the heater if it gets too cold. Too much ice and snow causes more sunlight to be reflected from earth. Hence, the trap is set. This is known as the ice age trap. This is why the natural state of earth is that of being covered with snow and ice.
Look here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data
However, man is resourceful and may find ways around this problem if we do start falling into a little ice age again. As long as we are not ignorant and listen to the so-called climate scientists who really have other agenda’s. A green agenda is still useless if it has the wrong items on the agenda… Obviously: As Easterbrook notes, global cooling is much more disastrous for humans than global warming. Apparently, climategate has now also spread to the USA. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/22/american-thinker-on-cru-giss-and-climategate/
Note that in Easterbrook’s projection graph, the line showing the increase and decrease in global temperatures of the northern latitude is dashed. It looks like the northern hemisphere is always getting the brunt of the extreme weather.
So if you get tired of all that ice and snow, you may know that you are always most welcome to come and stay with us here, in the southern hemisphere!