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
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.