Guest post by Dr. Richard Alan Keen
Oh my God, I’m going to fry!!!
Watts Up With That posted a prediction by Noah Diffenbaugh at Stanford that heat waves will increase across the U.S. over the next few decades, with the largest increases being in the higher elevations of the Rockies, especially Colorado.
Since I live at 9,000 feet above sea level in central Colorado, I’m terrified! I don’t think I can handle more days over 80F (it’s never reached 90 here).
Since CO2 has already increased by 110 ppm, any effects of increasing atmospheric carbon should be noticeable by now. Here’s a chart of the highest temperature recorded in the state of Colorado for each year since 1888.
The hottest recorded in the state is a pretty good indicator of the occurrence of heat waves, and a trend should indicate a change in heat wave frequency. I didn’t want to break the beauty of the graph by plotting the linear trend line, which is essentially horizontal with an upward trend of about 0.5F over the 120 year period. That would indicate little change in the occurrence of extreme heat in Colorado.
Is extreme heat getting more frequent in Colorado? During the first half of the record, from 1888 to 1947, Colorado had 17 years in which some place in the state reached 110F or higher. Since then, there’s been 15 year with 110-degree readings. It appears that Colorado heat waves haven’t gotten the word that they’re supposed to increase with the rising CO2 levels.
It also appears that I needn’t worry about a 90-degree day at my weather station for a while (that’s one reason I moved here).
Steve Goddard has a wonderful post on Watt’s Up With That detailing trends (or the lack thereof) in Colorado’s summer climate.
Here’s a broader look at Colorado’s climate – annual statewide mean temperatures for 160 years of record from four sources.
The data shown are:
NCDC combined divisional averages for the state;
USHCN and Hadley CRU gridded values for the Colorado “box” (USHCN and Hadley are so similar they are averaged into one time series);
NCAR-NCEP reanalysis surface temperatures for the Colorado “box”; and
Regional averages from stations in Colorado and neighboring states before 1895, when there were fewer stations in Colorado.
There’s a wealth of information here and many possible interpretations. The 30-year running mean emphasizes the PDO and AMO contributions. Colorado appears to follow neither oceanic oscillation very closely, but rather appears to respond to a mix of both oscillations.
More important is the lack of an overall trend in the temperatures. Colorado is predicted by many models to have the greatest warming of any state in the “lower 48”, but so far this warming is not evident. The warmest 30-year period remains 1933-1963 at 45.6F, 0.1F warmer than the most recent 30 years and 0.3F warmer than the first 30 years (1850-1879). The net warming from 1850-79 to 1980-2009 is all of 0.2F.
Although a warming signal is not evident over the entire record, there has been a warming since 1900 (which is what NCDC and others advertise as evidence of a warming Colorado). Even if one chooses to ignore the cooling after the warm 1860’s and concentrate on the 20th century, the bulk of the warming of that century occurred in a few years around 1930 – a bit early to be due to CO2.
Dr. Richard Keen
Co-op observer, climatologist, author, and teacher.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
White Wash works real good when it is inner circle peer review… Just ask Jones, Mann, and Briffa…
Funding is the name of the game…if your not trying to prove AGW you will receive nothing.. and if you try to disprove it, those participating in circular peer review will ignore you…
MangoChutney says:
July 11, 2010 at 5:32 am
O/T I think, but i am convinced that the rise in recorded global temperatures isn’t linked to burning fossil fuels, but is instead linked to the rise in sales of fizzy drinks – has anybody studied this?
I bet you could plot the rise of CO2 in Colorado to the sales of Coors Beer.
Kevin Kilty says:
July 11, 2010 at 7:34 am
……………………………………………………………………….
Nicely done… a simple plot of individual months… and a look at it from a much longer term or CLIMATE view… which simply says “Nothing Happening Here”
I wonder what the German Octopus predicts?
Regg,
Cheyenne does not show any increase in max temperatures over the last 80 years.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=481675&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr2009.sas&_SERVICE=default¶m=TMAXRAW&minyear=1930&maxyear=2009
old construction worker says:
July 11, 2010 at 9:10 am
I bet you could plot the rise of CO2 in Colorado to the sales of Coors Beer.
Of course you can, it’s due to a simple chemical equation:
COORS + BEER = CO2 + ER-ER + BS
No grant funding for you, smarty pants.
There’s been a decline in heatwaves in the US through time. This is what the data shows. The 1930’s were, by far, the hottest years in the US:
Joseph D’Aleo shows data:
You and I are apparently not using the same data. This is raw data. People can look at my graph and decide for themselves whether or not it shows what I have said. In a yearly variation of 35 Centigrade 1 Centigrade does not make much of a difference. I know this because I have lived through many. The same plants and animals are here now that were here in the 1890s. Please put up a graph of your data and explain your adjustments.
I need to work on my tan, I think I’ll visit Colorado, as we know it’s so terribly sunny and hot there.
🙂
Doesn’t seem to matter which city you go to in the US: The 1930’s heat waves & droughts still reign supreme.
NOAA is full of prunes.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 11, 2010 at 10:44 am
The Killer Heat oracles are digging themselves a hole.
For a subject that is full of uncertainties, their proclamations are most unwise.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the predictions made for CAGW keep moving. When you show the trend line to not meet their predictions (um projections) they say that the extremes will be larger. When you show that a given area does not conform to their predictions they say that it doesn’t apply everywhere (after originally announcing it does apply everywhere). Global sea ice doesn’t count, nor does antarctic sea ice. Southern extreme winters don’t count. You’ve got a better chance playing a carney game of chance than winning this discussion with a CAGWer.
[snip] it’d be no big deal. But these nutters have persuaded western governments to throw billions at a mythical non-problem. How can this perversion of science, this hi-jacking of the public purse, be stopped?
I suspect that the answer lies not in science – in Popperian falsification – but in politics, specifically in the hearts and minds of the public. With its regular forceful arguments, spiced up with wit and humour , WUWT’s approach must win through in the end.
Montaigne said – and it sums up the Hockey Team nicely – “Nothing is so fervently believed as that which cannot be proven.” The hard-liners ain’t gonna change their minds. My hope is that the battle for the public’s hearts and minds will be won by our side, so that when global warming zealots trumpet their end-of-days scare story they’ll meet with scorn and derision.
[Reply] Sorry for the snip, but we don’t discuss religion here. RT-mod
“It also appears that I needn’t worry about a 90-degree day at my weather station for a while (that’s one reason I moved here).”
Nothing a little asphalt can’t take care of…..
tarpon says:
July 11, 2010 at 8:10 am
Great posting — Keep it up WUWT, the truth will in the end win out.
It is quite possible man does not have enough data to understand how climate works — Or for that matter enough knowledge””
No other science has been more studied than medical/health.
No one is stupid enough to think that Drs know it all.
And yet we are supposed to believe that glorified climate computer programers do?
Central West Australia had their coldest day – ever.
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/140710/australia___global_warming_my_backside_with_the_coldest_day_in__years.aspx
stevengoddard says: July 11, 2010 at 9:50 am
I wonder what the German Octopus predicts?
I always found octopus somewhat rubbery. Good flavor, though.
And I don’t think Coors has much to do with local CO CO2, since it’s mostly exported to states that appreciate it’s marketing mystique.
30 years warm, 30 years cool, 30 warm, 30 cool. The complete cycle is most of a lifetime, so it’s understandable why people don’t have the ‘big picture.’ Mix that in with a true-believing media and opportunistic investors, it’s also understandable why so many would go along with global warming ‘remedies’ that are so clearly in their worst interests.
BS-detector:
square boxes.
Administrators are beating scientists into submission. My suspicions peak any time records start at a nice round number (like 1900 1950 etc) for no apparently-scientific reason.
Make it fit in a box.
(e.g. anthropogenic computer fantasy)
“Our version of reality has square corners.”
As I posted in earlier threads, it has become an annual ritual for the Alarmists to publish “studies” of global heat doom every summer during a heat wave. The records will be sliced and dices to fit the Alarmist’s narrative. And the goal posts are constantly on the move. It is not just warmer temps that we will see, but longer and more frequent “heat waves (whatever that is). If I remember correctly, the IPCC was more interested in Winter time and nocturnal temps. According to thier predictions, the most dramatic increases would be nocturnal lows and Winter time highs.
Of course, what is missing is prespective. The way the Alarmists talk, long term summer heat waves and droughts only came about in the 1970s and later.
Looks like Stanford is wrong, again.
Stanford has a tendency to send the marching band onto the football field at the wrong time.
What is it about Stanford University — they have a whole gagle of wrongheaded folks on AGW — must be getting grants, or taking orders from the elite — who favor trans-national carbon taxes and control.
The earth was extremely hot after the big bang and the planet coalesced from space debris. Over billions of years there has been a cooling trend to the point where we can actually live on this planet. Then when the sun goes supernova there will be an intense warming trend and finally back to abosolute zero. Do people think our current temperature fluctuations really mean anything at all in the grand scheme of things?
The Colorado Temperatures from 1840 are interesting. Notice the all-time high in the 1930’s. To date, 25 of the 50 States still have their all-time record highs recorded in the the 1930’s. There were NO record all-time highs in the 2000’s!
However, what is more interesting is seeing the 90,000 CO2 measurements taken by hundreds of scientists over the last two centuries (Beck 2007). Before the CO2 measurements started at Mauna Loa in 1958 at 290ppm, CO2 readings were recorded as being about 375ppm in 1857, and further back in 1825 still higher at about 425ppm. CO2 will have to increase another 35ppm just to catch up to 1825.
Much to the dismay of Dr. James “coal fired power plants are ‘factories of death'” Hansen, Atmospheric Temperature Deviation marches to the beat of Solar Irradiance, not CO2!