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
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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.