Is March In The Upper Midwest Losing It’s Freeze? The actual data doesn’t seem to support Climate Central’s recent claim.
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Yesterday, WUWT discussed an article on future regional temperature modeling from Heidi Cullen et. al at Climate Central claiming that most of the upper Midwest will no longer be freezing in March by the year 2090 – as a result of increases in atmospheric CO2 content. This was based on averaging the output of 16 different climate models. Here’s the image included in their press release:
Caption: In blue: projected areas with average March temperatures below freezing in the 2010s (above) compared to the 2090s (below), under a high carbon emissions scenario extending current trends. Click image for an interactive map
As you can see below, CO2 has been increasing rather steadily for the last few decades, particularly the last 30 years. No dispute there.
Source: Scripps Trends in Carbon Dioxide
If Climate Central’s press release theory were correct, we would expect to have already seen an increase in March temperatures, and an increase in number of years above freezing. Below is a graph of NCDC March temperatures for Wisconsin since 1979.
The orange line is the mean and the red line is the freezing line. Note that not only is there no trend towards a warmer March, but the standard deviation is high (3.67) and the range is also large – about 15 degrees difference between the warmest and coldest March.
Source: NCDC Wisconsin March Temperature data
Even so, the 100 year graph of March temperature in Wisconsin seems rather flat also.
The next graph is the number of years above freezing per decade. As you can see, there were fewer years above freezing in the last decade than there were in the 1980s.
Minnesota shows the same patterns – no warming and high variability. The number of years above freezing has also decreased.
NCDC Minnesota March Temperatures
And here is the 100 year March temperature graph, like Wisconsin, pretty flat:
Like Wisconsin, it seems there have been less days above freezing in recent decades:
Conclusion: Based on the NCDC data, there is no evidence that increases in CO2 over the last 30 years have affected March temperatures in the north central region of the USA or moved the freeze line north. Once again, we see a case of scientists trusting climate models ahead of reality.
More on Climate Central:
http://climatecentral.org/about
http://climatecentral.org/about/people/
UPDATE:
Here is Minnesota and Wisconsin with five different trend lines for different start years.
In order to highlight the lack of correlation between year and March temperature, I also made a scatter diagrams:
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See more details on Minnesota here:
http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/MN_March.htm
showing some station data – declining number of Marches above *freezing* – climate central is apparently trying to hide the decline.
Models trusted above reality. I like that. That is a good way of saying it. Please keep informing the masses of these realitites. Perhaps they will eventually see the light regarding these charlatans.
” Once again, we see a case of scientists trusting climate models ahead of reality.”
They’re not scientists. Scientist actually do science, these guys are paid to write propaganda pieces.
Climate Science is an oxymoron.
Models only have a very short lifetime (a bit like politician’s pledges).
It’s so easy to predict anything knowing that another model will probably supercede it in time to come.
Meanwhile, the model, upon which future funding is often based, has done it’s job.
They’re great things really !
Steven: You wrote, “The orange line is the mean and the red line is the freezing line. Note that not only is there no trend towards a warmer March…”
There’s no trend line on the graph. How can we tell if there is “no trend towards a warmer March”? Please throw some linear trend lines on the graphs. Thanks.
Founded in 1976, the Tides Foundation has provided more than $300 million in funding for what … that honor and promote human rights, justice, and a healthy, sustainable environment.”
There’s no money to be made with reality.
My understanding of the English language may be imperfect, but when you say:
“Once again, we see a case of scientists trusting climate models ahead of reality.”
Do you mean to say that reality is bound to catch up with the models, or that models are trusted INSTEAD of reality?
Everybody with a basic understanding of science knows that climate models have no validation and thus zero predictive skill. It is amazing that the garbage produced by climate models is actually reported and believed by some. Mind you in the UK our climate modellers can tell what conditions will be like within 25km squares 50 years from now and bureaucrats are already wasting money planning for what is to come. Unbelievable!
I said something like this on the last thread concerning the Comedy (oops Climate) Central article.
For crying out loud. Even if they could come up with this junk-science, which of the 16 General Circulation Models were used to obtain this summarized computer output? Were the 16 out of 21+ GCMs used by the IPCC chosen based on which produced heating in the central plains of the US?
Some of these Bozos (that means clowns) believe that the GCMs can give regional future climate changes, regional warming, cooling, drought, and flooding.
What does it mean when 6 models shows warming in the central plains of the US, 6 models show no change, and 4 models show cooling? This is all pure junk-science.
Hey boss, what’re we supposed to do with this lunched 2010 Freeze-Line Anomaly?
‘ stack it over there by the compactor.’
Bob Tisdale (11:34:53) :
Sorry, Bob, cold surges wiped out all the trends. We tried to save them with heaters and spraying water, but they all froze. Crops are ruined.
The Met Office Forecasts 16C warming in the Arctic by the end of the century, so there won’t be a lot of cold air coming to Wisconsin any more.
People will be escaping from the desert heat of Chicago to Wisconsin in their tri-hybrid wind/solar/hydrogen powered cars.
The day the Earth froze: An hour-long storm started a mini ice age, say scientists
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1262904/Prehistoric-hailstorm-triggered-1-000-year-freeze-Earth-wiped-animal-species.html
Mega-flood triggered Europe’s last big freeze… and global warming could plunge us into the cold again, warn scientists
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1262750/Mega-flood-triggered-Europes-big-freeze–global-warming-plunge-cold-warn-scientists.html
Bob Tisdale (11:34:53) :
The data shows a huge year over year variability of 5-15 degrees, so I intentionally left trend lines out of the graphs. Moving the start points by one year drastically effects the calculated trend. For instance, the 1979-2009 trend is negative, and the 1978-2009 trend is positive.
The point being that any trend line I generate won’t be statistically significant. The number of years above freezing charts are the most interesting ones.
We pause briefly for a word from REALITY:
The National Weather Service has made it official. The first 3 months of the year were the coldest ever reported in Miami Beach, Naples, and West Palm Beach, and was among the coldest winters ever for Ft. Lauderdale and Miami.
http://cbs4.com/local/RECORD.LOW.TEMPERATURE.2.1607771.html
Returning now to the Warming Fantasy Channel, we hear Mac say “I prefer my warming models to be green eyed red heads!”
Strange how GISS allways shows increase, but when you plot some station yourselves, its flat……
Science is dead. Soon we shall abandon our cities and our clothes, paint ourselves with woad, and gibber at the moon to hold back the glaciers in Greentopia.
Steve Goddard (11:52:51) : Then you really can’t say there is no trend.
See what Chiefio is finding in his work on GHCN.
Thought provoking stuff indeed.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
kwik (12:07:16),
Here are some examples of NASA/GISS temperature adjustments made into blink gifs: click
The effect is to show either artificial warming, or more steeply warming, or both in the “adjusted” charts.
Bob,
I certainly can look at these graphs and say that there is no evidence of either an upwards or downwards trend.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wisconsin_march_temps.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/minnesota_march_temps.png
The onus is on the people claiming warming to demonstrate the upwards trend, not me.
I can see the Gore press conference now:
Gore: As you can see from this projection of the freeze line in March the state of Minnesota will lose its state emblem, the polar bear…
Aide: (whispers)
Gore: It’s a what?
Aide: Loon
Gore: They call polar bears loons in Minnesota?
Aide: (whispers)
Gore (to Aide): A bird? That swims? How can they have a waterfowl be the state animal in a place that cold?!
Gore (to Audience): Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s worse than we thought. Minnesota has already lost its treasured polar bear population. This is a sad day for planet earth and proof that we have crossed the tipping point.
The issue is really about bias. If the average of the output of 16 different climate models showed no geographical reduction in the freezing they would assume something is wrong with the inputs and make necessary adjustments until the computer models tell them what they want. Computer modellers have an inbuilt bias according to Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann.
(PDF)
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Schmidtetal-QSR04.pdf
I’m going Red, blood red, as opposed to green hell. There is no hidden meaning in my going Red. I just like the color blood red rather than green hell.