by Steve Goddard
Summer 2009 in Breckenridge Colorado
Earlier, Anthony reported on a Stanford University report which forecast very hot summers for the four corner states. I found this particularly amusing, because we are having our second cold, rainy July in a row.
Looking at the long term summer trends, NCDC shows no trend in Colorado summer temperatures over the last 80 years. Last summer was the 14th coldest since 1930.
But it gets worse. The NCDC data above showing no trend has been tortured upwards to get to that point.
If we look at less tortured data (the USHCN “raw” data) we see a different story about Colorado temperatures. Below are all of the of Colorado USHCN station (RAW) maximum temperatures since 1930. As you can see, high temperatures have been declining in most of Colorado over the last 80 years, as CO2 has gone from 310 to 390 ppm. The correlation between CO2 and hot days in Colorado is negative, and any study which shows otherwise is deeply flawed.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/state_CO_mon.html
I mean, you should be happy that you’ll have nice & cosy summers in the future in Colorado, (if we don’t act NOW!) so why complain about the modelists.
June was pretty cool here in WY this year as well. In my recollection, the coolest in 15 years. Sorry, I have no graphs available to post, real or adjusted. As Captain Renault from “Casablanca” was quoted as saying in a previous post, “I am shocked, shocked” that the CO numbers have been tampered with!
The record in America is 134 degrees. 90 years ago?
I am sure this is why they force the models instead of actual readings.
It also seems wetter in Colorado the last decade.
But that’s just weather…. er…uhmmm….80 years of weather!
};>)
Too Cool! Thanks again Steve!
Henry, wasn’t there something called a heat storm – can’t remember exactly – in Calif in the 1800’s? It was somewhere around 134F too, again check that, it’s my old memory again.
Related, but in the weather isn’t climate dept:
Two 2 days ago in Denver, high temp was 63, normal high 87 (24 deg below normal)
Correction, high temp was 67, 20 deg below normal
The upcoming cooling event by Joe Bastardi:
http://www.accuweather.com/video/73146202001/one-more-look-at-the-coming-cooling.asp
Oh, and BTW, 36 deg C in Germany ATM, about 98 deg F, a bit hot, but i’m glad i’m not in Colorado 😉
We used to count on the snow being gone from the high passes of the Colorado Rockies by July 1 and opening up the four wheel drive trails to the tops of the fourteeners. The sights from there was just out of this world.
Colorado experienced a pretty serious drought recently and the past few years we seem to be coming out of it.
“Below are all of the of Colorado USHCN station (RAW) maximum”
Missed a few, eg. Durango, Telluride…. Don’t know if it matters, you’ve got enough to make the point.
Steve, do you live in Breckenridge, too?
It snowed at the top of Hoosier Pass, nine miles south of Breckenridge, yesterday. Should it be snowing in July in 2010 if “global warming” is really occurring? Oh I forgot, with the warmists, A is non-A, therefore warming causes snow.
I’ve lived in Breckenridge since 2005, and we’ve had seven-month ski seasons for all of those five years. When Breckenridge closes in mid-April the snowpack is still building since we continue getting storms through May. I skied from early October to late May this past season.
Nearby Loveland Ski Area had its second-earliest opening ever on October 7, 2009 and Arapahoe Basin had its earliest opening ever on October 9, 2009 thanks to sustained early cold weather which enabled snowmaking operations. Since I moved to Breckenridge I’ve had so many great powder skiing days that I can’t remember all of them.
As for “summer” in Breck – what summer? We barely reach 72º at the peak of summer, and the temperature commonly drops into the upper 30s at night. We have cold rain, hail and thunderstorms almost every day. Don’t get caught above treeline in one of those! Yesterday I had to wear a winter jacket to work as cold thunderstorm charged through Breck in the late afternoon.
In three months, A-Basin and Loveland ski areas open again – but didn’t the warmists predict that by now ski areas would be suffering from “global warming?”
Jim G
We drove up to Cheyenne on July 3 to buy and set off fireworks (anything fun is illegal in Colorado.) It got so cold the kids went to the car to warm up.
Humph! You guys are no fun with all this cooling stuff. Maybe I can misconstrue things so that global cooling is caused by CO2…yeah….that’s the ticket! No where did I put George Soros’ phone number?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: no matter how much we know that cold is generally bad, warm generally good, we should all be praying for the next little ice age to take hold sooner rather than later, because the damage our political elite is doing now far outweighs any harm threatened by a protracted cold period. Of course the Schneiders and the Manns will just call it Anthropogenic Global Cooling caused by aerosols (again), and Greenpeace volunteers will be spraying mountain tops with black paint – but somehow I don’t think that will wash. We’ll be colder, but we’ll be free.
Al Gore says:
July 9, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“Humph! You guys are no fun with all this cooling stuff. Maybe I can misconstrue things so that global cooling is caused by CO2…yeah….that’s the ticket! ”
No prob; CO2 in the stratosphere causes cooling as it radiates LWIR to space. (Can i have a million of the next 100 million you make for the tip?)
I guess I should pack an extra warm shirt for my elk hunt in Sep. around Monarch Pass.
That looks like rotten snow on the mountains in the picture. It isn’t really cold this summer either. It’s called rotten cold. The cold rain and hail and thunderstorms, well, as you probably guessed those are rotten too.
And those so-called “rocky” mountain. Those rocks are rotten, buddy. By the year 2025, if mankind is still alive, they’re going to crumble and tumble into the Sea of Cortez. That’s not a typo. By the year 2050 the only skiing you’re going to be doing is jet skiing in tropical salt water in your backyard. When the south pole melts or whatever Mexico will be underwater and the Pacific ocean will reach all the way to Colorado or something like that. Bank on it. Enjoy that snow while it lasts because it’ll probably be the last snow anyone will see EVAH!
juanslayton
Durango has a station but no data. I did miss ToHellURide, but it also shows a downwards trend.
Breckite
No, I am a flatlander. ;^)
Steve,
It is “unseasonably cool” in most of the west. I still can not believe there were “freeze-warnings” in the Snake River Valley (Northwest) area in late June. We are just giving back to the east 😉 Amazing how that El Nino/Nina work…too bad it is so worthless to model.
I rode home through pouring rain this afternoon and arrived cold and wet. Off to play soccer now in the puddles ….
More from the weather (can you have weather for a whole month?) is not climate department:
Friends in Pocatello, Idaho report that May was the coldest on record (since 1939 when record keeping began in the area). I have a copy of the news report and can email it out if anyone keeps tabs on this sort of thing.
San Jose Mercury News (Bay Area, CA) reported that Silicon Valley May was on track for one of the coolest (I haven’t checked to see how the last couple of days of the month played out).
I’m not in the Four Corners area, but the Panhandle of Texas is close…I understood our cool, wet summer last year, El Ninos do that to us. But this year? We (Lubbock area) haven’t hit 90 degrees in a couple of weeks. If not another drop of rain falls this month, it’ll be the fifth wettest July on record. No more for the whole year, and we’re four inches above the normal. For the year.
Regarding the above comment with the jeep trails, three years ago I hit the trails between Silverton and Telluride. At the first of July, they’d had to get bulldozers to clear the tops of the trails, so the Independence Day crowd would be able to get over them. Snow was ~15′ deep at the top.
Thank you, Steve.
I can attest that this summer is cooler than usual in Southern Colorado (San Juan mountains).
Two first weeks in July usually were the only time of the year we were thinking about air conditioning (though it was never hot enough long enough to act on this thinking).
This July, I must close windows in my office when I am working late at night — two or three hours after sunset it becomes intolerably cold. Last winter also was the coldest and one of the snowiest in my memory (we live here since 1991).
There were three or four unusually hot and dry years in the end of 1990s, when the Sun’s UV radiation was visibly at its peak. Now it’s back to much colder weather.
P.S. I rarely have seen a more repulsive human being than professor Michael Mann. He seems to be a mentally disturbed individual, a compulsive liar with dissociated personality. Most unfortunate result of the subversion of science by the government-funded Academia.
People used to talk about the weather, being so fickle, it was always a good conversation starter.
It still is, just ask your neighbor, they will talk your ear off about the weather.
The only people talking about catastrophic weather, are our elected officials.
Temps in the north east break a record by a degree or two, and it makes the headlines. Here we have temps as much as 20 degrees below normal, and there’s no ‘what’s up’ except on WUWT.
That´s because of Global Warming!. Whence does come that snow? from evaporation because of GW! That´s it….And that f## rain makes me pee a lot (Al Bedwetter)!
Why hasn’t anybody collected ALL of the rural raw unadjusted data from around the world (where available) and graphed the earth’s temperature from it?
It’s not as simple as that. In the US, at any rate, rural stations have even worse microsite issues than urban. And then there is the cacophony of “rural” airport issues . . . ~ Evan
Al Gore says:
July 9, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Humph! You guys are no fun with all this cooling stuff. Maybe I can misconstrue things so that global cooling is caused by CO2…yeah….that’s the ticket! Now where did I put George Soros’ phone number?
Well, every man has to believe in something.
I believe I’ll have another ale … 🙂
The summer chart is a nice chart that shows the basic pattern of the AMO. Hot in the 30s, declining into the bottom of the cycle in the 70s, climbing up to the peak in the early 2000s. Damn how did honest data get out into the wild?
How close are you guys to producing a paper on the number of station reports that invalidate the alleged global warming trend, and the use of biased temperature corrections? And has your work to-date identified just what the global temperature trend means (day or night, winter/summer, 24/7 vs max/min changes, etc.?). The listing of bad stations by itself, eventthough there are others doing the same in Australia, New Zealand et al, without context is easily dismissed (correctly) as anecedotal.
I believe the climate change/CO2 is a fear scam, but nowhere in the various books and articles do I find a comprehensive review and critique of the individual station reports and what actually creates the IPCC trends. Somewhere are the stations (modified or not) that create the trend, but where they are and what periods of the temperature variation during the year the trends reflect, is unclear.
Bulk analysis gives the IPCC trend. It does not explain what the trend means, because the data is so much a stew.
REPLY: analysis is done, language review and references editing now -A
I was just wondering why R Gates has quit referencing the AMSU website. Back at the height of the El Niño he was referencing the site almost every day, and now, it’s eerily missing from his posts. 😉
Funny. I shoveled snow three of the five July 4ths I lived in Breck in the mid ’90’s. And even more humorous–to me anyway–I actually painted the building shown on the left at 0:21–the old bank bldg.– DURING snow in the summer of ’95. Obviously not the whole building, but there were days we worked during light snowstorms.
On a separate note, I left Phoenix Wednesday at 108 and arrived back in Denver to 67. Nothing like a 40+ degree difference in an hour or so flight. Not exactly a heat wave in these parts lately. Generally speaking, things are pretty similar to when I moved here in ’92. Less drought of late, but the cycles seem consistent. Some years warmer than others, some snowier, etc. etc. Overall same screwy weather as it’s always been.
Weather isn’t climate although with the craziness I have seen in 20 years living here it may as well be.
I’ll be moving back to Colorado in three weeks from Vegas. I look forward to the cold.
Al Gore says:
July 9, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Humph! You guys are no fun with all this cooling stuff. Maybe I can misconstrue things so that global cooling is caused by CO2…yeah….that’s the ticket!
That would be logical. Dry ice is CO2 and when CO2 gas reacts with water it is an endothermic reaction,etc,etc. And , last but not least…baking soda cools big stomachs (like Al´s belly).
“P.S. I rarely have seen a more repulsive human being than professor Michael Mann. He seems to be a mentally disturbed individual, a compulsive liar with dissociated personality. Most unfortunate result of the subversion of science by the government-funded Academia.”
WOW just WOW
I can’t but be so disgusted at some of the posters here.
You want to call yourself Skeptics?
I call you political opportunists, trying to pushing your Libertarian Ideals down our throats. Give me MY freedom not your CRAP.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/
I was looking at temperatures regards biological effects in California, and what struck me was, that while most papers use average temps with warming trends, if you look at Max temps, either raw or adjusted, then there is often a cooling trend. The cooling trend usually correlates well with the solar sunspots peaking in the 50’s. The Colorado max trends look similar as did a random sampling other states. It is the minimum temperatures that drive the larger means and warming trends. This has been well documented, but the continued use of the average, hides patterns and alternative explanations. UHI is the best candidate for driving minimum temperatures. While allowing for cahnges due to things like El Nino and the PDO, it can also be argued that the use of average temps hides the solar signal that is more readily seen when using the max, where most stations showed a cooling trend of the max since about 2000 in accord with a drop in sunspots. So then if CO2 is adding more forcing, it should be seen similarly in the max and minimum temperatures. What is the alarmist dogma on this?
I think many of the adjustments are probably done with the best of intentions. Although their were a few that seem implausible. Still the most disturbing and striking feature was that for many adjustments to the max, there were very different adjustments for the minimum. And that I have trouble understanding that logic. A thermometer does not usually run hot for minimums but not for maximums. The USHCN outlines a list of comparisons and adjustments they do, but their general explanations doesn’t really explain how adjustments for max vs minimums can differ. Such cases need more specific explanations and transparency.
In the late 1960’s (probably 1968-69) I was working down town Denver and rode the bus to work. I vividly remember sweltering in 100 degree temps on the bus. All the bank thermometers were in the low 100’s, and you had to watch your step on some of the parking lots and intersections to avoid stepping in melted asphalt from the crack sealer they used to prevent water damage in the winter. We also set new records for the number of 90+ days back in the 1970’s and mid 1980’s.
In the last 15-20 years I cannot recall any summer that was as stifling hot as those three periods.
Since the official temperature got moved to DIA from Stapleton has complicated comparing official high temps for recent years and the period when Stapleton Air Field was the official record location.
Larry
BPW
I flew from Denver to Phoenix on October 11 or 12 last year. It was 18F when I left Denver and 88F when I arrived in Phoenix.
It’s been the same in southern California. I’ve lived in north county San Diego for six years now and this is without question the coolest spring/summer I’ve seen. We had a “May grey” and then a “June gloom.” Rarely did it get above 80. It’s been foggy virtually every morning and I’m 30 miles from the coast. We’ve had maybe one hot day in the past four months, which is completely unprecedented in my admittedly short time here. I figured the hot weather would come in July, but here we are still in a “June gloom” on July 9th. Highs are usually in the 90s every day by this time of year.
We live in Fort Collins, CO and we hardly had a warm spell last summer. We spent the 4th in Vail and it was cold and rainy the whole time with barely a timely break for watching the fireworks outside.
This summer is off to a late, wet start also. Our fifth grader almost got snowed in for an extra day on school field trip to Estes Park in mid-May. We spent the 4th in Steamboat and got hit with a wicked rain/cold front so we watched from inside the Grand with everyone else while they barely pulled off the fireworks display on Howelson Hill. It got down into the high 30s that night and we ran the fireplace.
My fifth grader just asked me if he can go to the neighborhood pool with the neighbor and I reflexively asked him if he was sure it was warm enough.
And now it’s past summer solstice if you haven’t noticed.
Algore must certainly be spending much of his time in CO. The Algore effect you know…
“I call you political opportunists, trying to pushing your Libertarian Ideals down our throats. Give me MY freedom not your CRAP.”
The degree of ideological confusion in this post is profound. Any attempt to respond risks coddling a tarbaby. So I will put it this way:
Harvey, Harvey, Harvey . . .
theduke
“Harvey:“I call you political opportunists, trying to pushing your Libertarian Ideals down our throats. Give me MY freedom not your CRAP.”
The degree of ideological confusion in this post is profound. Any attempt to respond risks coddling a tarbaby. ”
This reminds me of the definition of religious freedom in late-Roman Goth controlled Western Empire. It meant that whichever church was in charge should be free to oppress and slaughter heretics. Fascists always claim political oppression when you try to stop them from shoving their totalitarianism on people with jack boot heels. Like the hostage taker who shoots his hostage says to the negotiator: “Look what you made me do!”
Ah, Phoenix in the Summer. How I miss Sky Harbor. BTW the Stevenson Box for the
Weather Service was next the Black USFS ramp for a while, I wonder about the extreme
readings they got. We always were cooking up an escape to Winslow or Prescott to get out of that place. Our Airtanker would develop a ‘miss’ in #2 engine and we always had mechanics in either place. This was back in the 90’s- Rather curious about that Stevenson Screen I may have to look it up…..
Winslow at 96F. and 30 knots of wind out of the west was heaven after Phoenix…
harvey,
Hit the bull’s eye, haven’t I?
But … I heard that 2010 is the hottest year in the history of the planet. Six days of hot weather in Philadelphia proves it. Just ask Joe Romm.
harvey says:
July 9, 2010 at 6:00 pm
“……Give me MY freedom not your CRAP.”
==========================
Careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
What you call CRAP, we call freedom.
My first ever post on WUWT.
First off, many thanks to Anthony and all the contributors who do a fantastic job. The knowledge I’ve gained here has given me the ammunition to keep my family’s liberal arguments at bay; I think I’m even making headway with a few of them.
Secondly, I want to affirm the cool weather here in So Cal. I can only recall perhaps 3-4 days over 80 degrees in Irvine and the surrounding areas this year. Normally it would be easier to count the days under 80. It’s effin’ freezing, where’s the dang global warming???
We are looking at a very strong La Nina building. There is some left-over warm water from last year’s El Nino in the North Equatorial Counter-Current that has to be cooled off first before the really negative La Nina sea surface temperatures start-up but this is only a matter of a month or two.
The Pacific cross-section shows there are -3C, -4C and -6C cooler waters ready to surface/influence the surface temperatures at the beginning of the Nino regions at about 110W which will then migrate across the Pacific. The cross section also shows that an El Nino will follow this La Nina next year, perhaps starting up a little earlier than normal. The strong La Nina could peak out in November and El Nino conditions will then start to build for next year.
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3533/laninacrosssectionjuly9.gif
To see how much more cooler water will eventually build into the Nino regions, we can look at the Pacific cross-section at 140W. The big blue and pink blob in the middle (between 5N to 5S) takes about 3 to 6 months to circulate up into the Nino regions and this blob has been getting colder and colder as time has gone on. The anomalies exceed -7.0C at some depths.
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7716/laninacrosssection140w.gif
The other indicators are starting to line up as well and this could turn out to be a very strong event (maybe the biggest on record). There’s still 2 or 3 months of further development required to make that call but it is certainly looking that way.
The US southwest gets less rainfall in a La Nina and the US mid-west and the Arctic cool-off the most of any region but that should be the forecast for the Winter for these locations now. Joe Bastardi’s forecast linked above is based on this same scenario.
And here I thought it was just SE Idaho that was chilly. Of course, I was expecting a cool summer considering the lack of sunspots, but my worry now is that I’ll get very little from a gargantuan garden project before the first killing frost. At least I’ve got several rows of carrots to chew on.
Well, I guess you get cooler while the NE gets hotter. Swings and roundabouts, isn’t it?
Bill Illis,
Also look at the Arctic OHC metrics. Whoa!
SST in free fall? http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
It’s definitely been a lot cooler the last couple of years in the Denver area. I didn’t think I would ever warm up after winter, which felt like it would never end, it was a very cool and wet spring. We finally started to see warmer temps in June, but now had record cold temps last week. I don’t know if the official high ever reached 67, but I never saw it reported higher than 61. 65 was the old record low in the early 1950s.
They also had to close Trail Ridge Road because of the snow. That’s the first time I’ve heard of that happening in July.
I have to say that a couple of cold rainy days in the middle of summer is very nice. It’s also nice to have everything green at this time of year. We should have a couple of days like this every month.
theduke, mikelorrey . . .
You guys give me hope!
• weather is not climate.
• earth changes
• humanity should be working on technology for surviving the coming 50,000 year global cooling NOW, while we still HAVE industry
http://www.gpuri.com/images/132/13241.png.htm
de´ja vu all over again . . .
Here near Brussels, Belgium, we had 33 degrees Celsius yesterday.
Remember that a hot days is a proof of global warming, while a
cold day is just weather. Yeah…
Hello guys
here in France it is beautiful and warm; so, burn as much petrol as you want, we like it
The time is rapidly approaching that good prudent governance will plan for a colder future with adequate power plants and hundreds of square miles of hot houses for food production. This CO2 stuff is definitely the cause of the coming ice age, of course subsidies will be essential and government involvement mandatory. Free market tomatoes in the face of global catastrophy would seem unseemly. Thank you for coming to OZ Anthony the way the world is going it may end up you and us against the rest.
Pfft, painting the mountains white to off-set the heat like that.
Thank you! Nice to see the building blocks that make up NOAA’s graph. Some day, hopefully, we’ll be able to see graphs from NOAA that illustrate “The Variation from ‘Standard'(or ‘Average’) Colorado July and August Temperature, Air Pressure, and Humidity” for the last 80 years.
Here in the upper Midwest the summer has been exceedingly normal. A few ups and downs but exactly what one would expect. We did have a warm spring and the corn is now tasseling 3 weeks ahead of schedule and already 8-10′ high in places. Should be a bumper crop.
No wonder we’re cooling off… look.
Global Volcanism Program | Volcanoes of the World | Find a Volcano by Eruption Date
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
1980 66 eruptions
1981 55 eruptions
1982 58 eruptions
1983 55 eruptions
1984 59 eruptions
1985 54 eruptions
1986 67 eruptions
1987 64 eruptions
1988 63 eruptions
1989 54 eruptions
1990 55 eruptions
1991 64 eruptions
1992 57 eruptions
1993 58 eruptions
1994 58 eruptions
1995 62 eruptions
1996 76 eruptions
1997 52 eruptions
1998 78 eruptions
1999 66 eruptions
2000 67 eruptions
2001 64 eruptions
2002 67 eruptions
2003 64 eruptions
2004 74 eruptions
2005 73 eruptions
2006 76 eruptions
2007 78 eruptions
2009 67 eruptions
2010 53 eruptions so far
It appears also that during solar max the VEI (volcano exposivity index) stays lower, mostly in the 0-2 range.
If you look closer, during the deep solar minimum years the VEI of the eruptions goes up. Lots of 3-4. This is preliminary but I wonder if the deeper the minimums go the higher the VEI? All the way to ice age?
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/17/6…#otherarticles
Analyzing data from our optical dust logger, we find that volcanic ash layers from the Siple Dome (Antarctica) borehole are simultaneous (with >99% rejection of the null hypothesis) with the onset of millennium-timescale cooling recorded at Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2; Greenland). These data are the best evidence yet for a causal connection between volcanism and millennial climate change and lead to possibilities of a direct causal relationship. Evidence has been accumulating for decades that volcanic eruptions can perturb climate and possibly affect it on long timescales and that volcanism may respond to climate change. If rapid climate change can induce volcanism, this result could be further evidence of a southern-lead North–South climate asynchrony.
Alternatively, a volcanic-forcing viewpoint is of particular interest because of the high correlation and relative timing of the events, and it may involve a scenario in which volcanic ash and sulfate abruptly increase the soluble iron in large surface areas of the nutrient-limited Southern Ocean, stimulate growth of phytoplankton, which enhance volcanic effects on planetary albedo and the global carbon cycle, and trigger northern millennial cooling. Large global temperature swings could be limited by feedback within the volcano–climate system.
stevengoddard says:
July 9, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Jim G
We drove up to Cheyenne on July 3 to buy and set off fireworks (anything fun is illegal in Colorado.) It got so cold the kids went to the car to warm up.
Cheyenne is 300 miles south of here so you can figure what it has been like where we are. In 1995 I was camping in Cody with 42 degrees F and rain. We were back to that type of weather again in late June/early July this year. Last 4 years have been cooler and wetter following 7 years of draught. No sunspots plus much more overcast weather. Makes my garden suffer (should have planted cabbage) and can’t use my telescopes much for other than wild life viewing. This stuff is all cyclical from my anecdotal point of view. When we were in the draught I said that God would take care of the averages by sending a flood and we came close to that here this year. Lots of snow on the mountain and rain on top of that.
Has anyone done an analysis of the signal to noise ratio in the temperature data since the 1850s? What is the “anomaly” trend of the variation? Positive, negative? How much of the temperature climb of 1.8*C or 0.8*C, depending on the period, is in changes in +/- noise variations?
I could not help noticing that you used mean MAXIMUM temperature on your Colorado temperature graphs. A departure in AVERAGE temperature from normal, like those used in standard presentations of global temperature anomalies, might be hard to see in that kind of presentation. If our average daily temperature was just a degree or so under the daily maximum it would not show on your graph, yet we would be “toast” if that ever happened.
GeoFlynx
Hot weather in Colorado only occurs in the afternoon. Nights are always cool here, so a “heatwave” would have to be defined by the high temperatures.
Re an earlier comment that Colorado seems to have had more rain in the past decade, California definitely has increased rain compared to 100 years ago. The average for the 40 years starting with 1970 (22.8 inches per year) is higher than the 40 year period starting with 1900 (20 inches per year). That is almost a 15 percent increase in average rainfall. Meanwhile, CO2 was increasing slowly but steadily worldwide.
So much for increased CO2 in the atmosphere creating droughts. It’s getting wetter around here. Which is a very, very good thing.
source: http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/monitor/cal-mon/frames_version.html
select Time Series, Statewide, Precipitation, Water Year (Oct-Sep)
GeoFlynx says:
July 10, 2010 at 9:06 am
“[…] If our average daily temperature was just a degree or so under the daily maximum it would not show on your graph, yet we would be “toast” if that ever happened.”
No, i can falsify that. That’s the weather here in Braunschweig, Germany, ATM, or something very similar, and i’m not “toast” yet. I’ll report back tomorrow.
I think it is going to be hard to bend the trends upwards as we go forward. The Nansen ice area and extent is now bending sharply across the the earlier years traces.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
stevengoddard says:
Hot weather in Colorado only occurs in the afternoon. Nights are always cool here, so a “heatwave” would have to be defined by the high temperatures.
GeoFlynx –
Hot nights, those with temperatures barely below the daily maximum, would not alter your graphical displays even if they were to happen on a daily basis. If those high temperatures were to occur every night the effects would be devastating and yet by your analysis of mean maximum temperature Colorado’s climate could be cooling!
We drove from Boulder to Flagstaff last week. The Colorado prairie was Spring green (but not Pennsylvania green as my wife reminds me) all the way to New Mexico. East New Mexico was also green and West New Mexico greener than expected. It never got above 91 – not the temperature or grass color we expect for a July 4th holiday in the South West!
GeoFlynx
Again, we don’t have hot nights in Colorado. A heatwave would mean hot temperatures, and the only time we ever have hot temperatures is in the afternoon. Therefore in measuring heatwaves in Colorado, the only sensible time to measure is in the afternoon.
I went ahead and downloaded the raw and adjusted annual mean Tmax for the Cheesman #051528 station.
The bottom line: the Raw data is higher than the adjusted data from 1903-1997 except during 1941 when the adjusted data is 3.26F higher. Then from 1999 to 2001 the adjusted data is higher by 5F, and after that the two temperatures agree to within 0.2F. I have no idea why there are a handful of days where the adjusted are warmer than the raw data, but the majority of the data does not show this to be the case. I suspect a similar result at the other Colorado stations since I found the same result at a station in AZ.
As for trends the raw data give a 1903-2009 trend of -0.003F/year and the adjusted data give a trend of +0.014F/year. Basically neither the raw or adjusted data show a trend in the annual mean maximum temperature.
Snow showers in the mountains of Colorado during the summers are not unusual at all. What is really falling is soft hail. It is really cool when accompanied by thunder and lightning (though a bit frightening when hiking in it!!!)
I want everyone to understand Colorado should be viewed in a climatic abstract sort of way, not as a real place. In other words, it’s just a place to obtain temperature and precipitation readings.
If you do start thinking of Colorado as a real place, you just might get the idea you would like to live here.
We have too many people here already. There’s not enough water to go around. We have an insane governor who thinks prosperity lies in spending money on jobs based on unsustainable, uneconomic, and unreliable technology, i.e., wind and solar power. We have Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We have had an invasion of Preble Jumping Mice, who must be protected at all costs. We have to deal with the People’s Republic of Boulder. Imagine Berkley on thin air. The highways are crowded. We have a demon horse, with fiery red eyes, greeting visitors on their arrival at DIA. This same horse killed its creator. Rumors have it DIA is a gathering place for aliens coming in for visits. The aliens really like the horse; it reminds them of some of their relatives. Some of the electricity for the airport is generated by a demonstration solar project; which demonstrates that solar electricity is very expensive and unreliable. Our museum of science and technology has a solar system on the roof, blessed by the Obama. This solar system will pay back the capital costs in a little over 100 years; 80 years after it’s expected lifetime has ended.
Really, you don’t want to live here. We’re all crazy.
Really, take from me, a Colorado native who doesn’t know any better than to stay.
1. Goodbye Harvey, I’m sure you won’t associate with this site any more.
2. Michael Mann’s grin reminds me of the kid who has just lied to the teacher about what you did, and you are getting in trouble, despite your protests. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
How close are you guys to producing a paper on the number of station reports that invalidate the alleged global warming trend, and the use of biased temperature corrections? And has your work to-date identified just what the global temperature trend means (day or night, winter/summer, 24/7 vs max/min changes, etc.?). …..
REPLY: analysis is done, language review and references editing now -A
Mr. Watts –
Your reply to my question is very exciting. If, as I suspect, the “trend” falls apart in the churning of data, so that it applies only locally (though possibly progressively), or locally but shifting, and only to some aspect of the data, and suggests heat redistribution rather than global, lower atmospheric temperature rise, then the BEST comparison will be the Hockey Stick, and the best image will be Al Gore on his ladder.
If/when the global warming hysteria is shown to be such, a book on the modern hysterias would be wonderful. No shortage of subjects: nuclear winter, ozone depletion blindness/crop failure, acid rain, DDT, sugar substitutes, female hormone replacement therapy and so on.
The trouble with questioning all these “threats” is that to some extent the dangers or undesired effects are real. Monstrously exaggerated, but with some nugget of truth. Those fixated on either the precautionary principle (paid for by someone else, probably their employer), or the creation of the “Granny state” (believers in the status quo and the lack of social benefit in risk management, rather than risk avoidance), may claim that without their shrieking nothing would have been done. True, at times, based on the squeaky wheel principle.
I look forward to your upcoming paper. Thank you for all your efforts. Criticism is leveled at auditors of science as noncontributors, yet we welcome auditors of finances, especially where our investements or taxes are involved. Not that long ago Government felt itself immune from the close scrutiny of its citizens (and still resists it). Anyone and anything that impacts another should be open to scrutiny, questioning and, where necessary, justification.
Just to confirm Steve’s assertion Geo, nights are never hot here. I had a summer in Breck when I never wore shorts at night. Not once. Temps in the 40s every night if not lower. Even in downtown Denver, where I live, it is cool at night.
Jack Simmons,
I have been telling people for nearly 20 years how horrible this place is. If you don’t like 75 one day followed by snow the next followed by 80, stay away at all costs. Why just yesterday I wore a winter jacket atop a mountain, then had a beer in the sun by the pool late day. Who the hell wants to live like that?