From the story: The Australian’s overheated time warp misses half of 2010 which had a NOAA press release in it below the fold, Dr. Richard Keen weighs in and does a spot check of the data from his own NOAA station (he’s an official observer).
And if you find this map hard to look at, you aren’t alone in seeing spots.
Keen writes:
Lawrimore’s comment…
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north. Also, the Great Lakes aren’t freezing as early or as much. “As cold outbreaks occur, cold air goes over the Great Lakes, picks up moisture and dumps on the Northeast,” he says.”
…shows a complete lack of understanding of weather (which makes up climate).
East coast snows are caused by lows off the coast, and if the storms move north, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC et al. find themselves in the warm sectors of the lows, and enjoy warm southerly winds and rain.
Furthermore, during the snow storms, the winds are from the northeast bringing moisture from the Atlantic (hence the name “nor’easter” for these storms); very little of the moisture comes from the Great Lakes. One of Philadelphia’s snowiest winters was 1978-79, when the Lakes were all but frozen over. Along the east coast, a region that averages very near freezing during the winter, the limiting factor for snow storms is not moisture, but temperature. Most storms are rain.
Now, the spot check.
NOAA’s calculation of the global temperature is based on their analysis of departures at 2000 or so grid points. One of those points included my weather station at Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, a location with no UHI or other troublesome influences. The NOAA map of June anomalies for the US, based on an unknown selection of stations, has Coal Creek sitting on the +4F contour.
The Coal Creek record is long enough to calculate 30-year normals, and June 2010 comes in at +1.0F above normal.
That’s 3 degrees less than the NOAA estimate for the same location, which is the difference between June being in the top 3 or being in the middle third. Now, this is simply a spot check of one of NOAA’s 2000 grid points, but it leads to the question of how far off are the other grid points?
Dr. Richard Keen
Steven Mosher writes:
“If you want to go beyond that bare belief, and engage in debates about WHY or HOW MUCH, then you are LOGICALLY committed to accepting some form of the record.”
Nope, sorry, and the reason is that your present method of collecting data is demonstrably worthless. Yet you are unaware that it is worthless.
Let me start with the second point, that you are not aware that your data is worthless. Do you know the seasonal variations in weather activity in central Florida? Of course you don’t. So, you are not aware that our normal summer pattern is gorgeous sunshine until the 3-5 pm mark when the daily thunderstorm rolls in. Been going on as long as I have been alive. At 3 pm, the normal temperature is in the 95-100 range. After the storm rolls through, the temperature is in the 80-85 range. We get a mid-day temperature change of twenty degrees almost daily. You were not aware, right?
You will say that this does not matter because the temperature readings are taken at the same time every day, that changes in the readings over the years are all that matter, and that local weather is random and has no effect on the readings over the years. Notice that the last clause is false. This weather pattern is not random. Suppose a temperature reading is taken daily at 3 pm. You might get a 100 degree reading there for years and find it followed by an 80 degree reading for years. If the environment is warming, for whatever reason, that warming influences the time that the storm arrives and the temperature reading. There is feedback. Do you take these matters into account in your temperature readings? of course you don’t. Suppose the change that I described occurred, what would you do? You would normalize it, of course. In normalizing the readings, you substitute your judgement for actual data.
The UHI effect creates similar problems. American cities increase the density of their energy using devices daily. The result is that American cities stay warmer longer at night. This is not a random phenomenon. It accelerates at various rates all the time. Temperature measurement stations located in American cities are worthless as a means of recording temperatures for your work. Yet most stations are in American cities or at airports, which experience the same problem. Until the proponents of AGW undertake serious studies and introduce an entirely new regime of measurement stations, your work will have its foundation in the moving sands.
Thanks Dr. Keen, just knowing that you understand the truth lets me know there are many others like you out there, just wish more would come forward with the proper science as you have done above. It just adds so much to the credence to other laymen out here or scientists outside this specialty who know it to be the truth too. It’s amazing how few proper words are needed to set it right. This is a war of words and thoughts, some are devious, though maybe not meant so, and some are just scientifically correct. it’s sad to see NOAA and NASA on the devious side of so many topics of late.
The same explanation we give for the similar warming that occurred in the MWP, the Roman, Optimum, etc.: internally generated (chaotic) fluctuations in the setting of the earth’s thermostat, i.e., its cloud cover. Here are relevant quotes from Roy Spencer’s recent book, The Great Global Warming Blunder
@R. Gates says: July 16, 2010 at 11:37 am
Where is the warmth coming from my skeptical friends?
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It’s a figment in the data manipulations and you are eating it my alarmist friend.
R. Gates says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:41 am
And what explanation would AGW skeptics give for the warmth of 2010 if not AGW?
Witches. There’s a historic precendent for it. In case of bad weather – blame witches.
Of course there is an underlying human side to it. The simple fact is that we don’t know how a lot of things, and climate and weather are part of that whole area we don’t know. However, for people to say “I don’t know.” leads to the reaction the Steve McIntyre got in the recent debate when he said “I don’t know.”
Given the fact that we don’t know, what are we going to do about it? Simple – create a scapegoat. There’s two ways of creating scapegoats, the first being make something new. Don’t know how heat works? Create Phlogiston. Don’t know how light transmits across a vacuum? Create Aether. Don’t know how people fall ill and die? Create Miasma.
The other way of creating a scapegoat, is to take something and give it superpowers. The weather not to your liking? Well there’s some old women, who can change shape, fly and kill at a distance who are to blame – we call them Witches. Alternatively, there’s a gas which can violate the laws of thermodynamics, make planets emit more than a theoretical black body, and can turn heat into cold – we call it Carbon Dioxide.
The whole AGW thing just proves that we humans are no more mature at handling uncertainty and our own ignorance, than we were during the Dark Ages.
Alexander K says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:44 am
The concept of an ‘average temperature’ in such an area may be statistically valid, but for all practical purposes is an absolute nonsense. Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?
It’s not statisically valid either. It is arithmetically valid, in the same way that an average phone number is computable.
Let’s take an example: I have a bath, it holds 1 ton of water. Its sitting there boiling merrily at 100C. I drop another ton of the old H20 in at 0C – what’s is the average temperature of the 2 tons of water?
If you said 50C, you’d be wrong – did I not mention the second lot of H2O was solid? Latent heat of fusion has just killed your average. Do sattellites scan the oceans, looking for how much floating ice there is and back calculating heat element in joules? No? Oops…
Another example, with emissivity: You have a black body radiator, you know it’s average temperature – therefore you know how much it’s emitting – right? Well, take half of that black body, and cool it to 0K and double the hot site to twice it’s temperature to compensate. Stefan Bolzman’s T^4 states that the emissivity of the hot side is now 16 times greater than what it was. Of course, it’s only half the area, but the upshot is – same average temperature, 8 times the emmissions. Oops…
I could give an example with specific heat capacities, but I think you get the idea. In short, if you average temperature, you break the laws of thermodynamics. If you break the laws of thermodynamics – you’re wrong.
You can average heat (energy), but not temperature – and they’re not the same.
Bill Steffen had an interesting comment about the rarity of 100 degree heat in the mid-west compared to early in the 20th century do to change in land use.
http://blogs.woodtv.com/2010/07/06/heat-continues/
Actually more intense land use growing corn with irrigation.
“Heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north,”
Dumbest thing I’ve read so far. This guy actually has a meteorology degree???? From *where*”?!?!?
The general science is pretty simple: if the globe is warming, and will continue to warm (it doesn’t matter what the cause is), the polar source regions will warm; the polar front jet (both Northern and Southern branches) will migrate northward; the Hadely Cell will dominate the mid-latitudes; and the storm tracks will also drive northward.
There are several mechansims for significant snowfall along the Eastern Seaboard. One of these being of Appalachians. The Appalachians act as a dam for very cold unmodified polar and artic air. The mountains keep the air funneled down the East Coast. However, in a warming enviorment, not only will the jet stream remain over Canada, but so will it coldest air. If a cyclone does develope and travel along the East Coast, there will be relatively warming advecting in behind (as compared to cooler regimes). The end result will be more than likely rain -everywhere.
Also, the Southern Branch of the polar jet will more than likely be north of its normal track. Droughts will result everywhere.
RGates
I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW?
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Don’t expect a “satisfactory” answer to a ridiculous question.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
R. Gates,
“I do find it suspicious that some skeptics look to the MWP as being the proof that CO2 is not causing today’s warming, when we know far less about the MWP then we do about the physics behind CO2 as a greenhouse gas and the increases we’ve seen in that gas since the 1700′s.”
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And I do find suspicious….pretty much everything you say as of late…
Who the heck has said that the MWP is “proof”….one way or the other?
It just is what it is….that’s it.
Don’t try and shift the argument.
A professor once told me: “A little knowledge….in the mind of someone who thinks they know more than they actually do…is a dangerous thing.”
Bingo. You would do better to listen and learn from the actual scientists and experts on here [of which one I readily admit I am not], rather than constantly challenging with your agenda-driven, deductive style of “debate.”
That, my friend, is as transparent, as CO2 gas.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Z says:
July 16, 2010 at 6:09 pm
===========================
Eloquently said!
1971 to 2000 base period.
Too bad they weren’t fair about it. 1990 to 2000 would have been more fair.
R. Gates says:
“I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer to the basic question: Why is 2010 so warm if not for AGW?
So warm R Gates? But what is so warm? It seems to me that this is much ado about nothing. Over the eons temperatures have risen and fallen to higher and lower levels than we are witnessing now over say the last 100 years. You seem to want to attribute this latest to set of variations to human influence. It seems to me that the burden of proof lies with you rather than with the likes of me. I don’t need to prove anything or offer any explanation of what appears to me to be a perfectly acceptable climate.
For my part, I see nothing exceptionally warm about it. For example, we have recorded the coldest temperatures where I live since 1947 and the coldest a little further away since 1871. Our summer wasn’t very warm either– in fact rather dismally cool. So much then for the warmest year on record that you like to quote.
Doug
Joseph D’Aleo on NOAA, “……they keep finding more warmth.”
Joseph D’Aleo. it’s ‘manmade’ global warming. but not how you’re thinking:
Joseph D’Aleo on dropped temperature stations and missing data:
Theo Goodwin says:
July 16, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Steven Mosher writes:
“If you want to go beyond that bare belief, and engage in debates about WHY or HOW MUCH, then you are LOGICALLY committed to accepting some form of the record.”
Nope, sorry, and the reason is that your present method of collecting data is demonstrably worthless. Yet you are unaware that it is worthless.
Let me start with the second point, that you are not aware that your data is worthless. Do you know the seasonal variations in weather activity in central Florida? Of course you don’t. So, you are not aware that our normal summer pattern is gorgeous sunshine until the 3-5 pm mark when the daily thunderstorm rolls in. Been going on as long as I have been alive. At 3 pm, the normal temperature is in the 95-100 range. After the storm rolls through, the temperature is in the 80-85 range. We get a mid-day temperature change of twenty degrees almost daily. You were not aware, right?…..
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I would like to add that that pattern – a daily afternoon thunderstorm is also typical of South Carolina, with the resulting temperature drop. However in North Carolina you get a different pattern. North Carolina gets more of a “measles” pattern of small intense thunderstorms in the afternoon. Therefore you can get major temperature differences for the afternoon highs in adjacent cities. As Dr Spencer pointed out a change in cloud cover (storms) can have a major impact on the global temperature.
I just did a quicky look at some southern east coast US cities for July 2008 & 2009 and found a rather interesting pattern. The more southern city (St Augustine FL) had rain on about 23 out of thirty one days. Columbia SC , Lumberton NC, and Fayetteville NC had rain 20 out of 31 days while Sanford NC and Rocky Mount NC had rain only 10 days out of 31. The pattern was a lot more consistent than I would have expected. Also the demarkation between expected thunderstorm vs occasional thunderstorms was a lot sharper than I expected. Sanford and Fayetteville are only thirty miles apart.
I wonder if the pattern would be sensitive enough to pick up the changes in cloud cover and therefore climate changes? I wonder if the “demarkation” is topographical or if it shifts over time as the climate shifts? Might be interesting to look at if I could get my hands on the data. Unfortunately Wunderground purged most of their back data about a year ago. Hopefully Dr Spencer or someone has the global satellite cloud cover data and has looked at it or is looking at it.
Also of note is Sanford is the snow line. North of Sanford you normally get some snow each winter. South of Sanford you usually get no snow. Sanford, in the last 15 years has gotten snow about three times.
Discussing scientific matters is a healthy exercise.
Based on what R.Gates is saying, there are two possible explanations for the current warming:
(1) The AGW explanation.
(2) The planet is at a peak, or approaching the peak, of a natural temperature cycle and will at some stage start to cool back to something like the 20th century norms.
Supernatural or flippant explanations (like witches) are not scientific. Nor it is legitimate to argue that ALL land, surface and satellite observations are fake. The planet is currently warming, and that is fact.
So how long does a scientifically-minded person persist with a belief if the empirical data continually shows the opposite? I would be delighted if the planet temperature started to decline smoothly back to 1960s levels. I would not mind being called a gullible fool. It would be a monkey off the mine and the world’s back.
But suppose the reverse happens. The sun is moving back towards a maximum. Suppose record temperature anomalies continue to be set in 2011, 2012, 2013, all the time with new and accurate satellite records of sea and land ice declines, sea level rise, 100-year droughts and floods etc. How long does a sceptic retain his doubts until he stops being 100% sceptical and starts to believe in something?
Scepticism and doubt are good because they push science to be more and more sure. But scepticism is not a forever condition. Science is a powerful tool because scientists are often wrong. There must be a tipping point even to the point of: “Well, while retaining scepticism, I accept that action must be taken on these data, if only on precautionary grounds”. Remember, even Doubting Thomas had a bottom line. What is yours?
HOTTEST JUNE WAS IN 1846 then 1676 and finally 1976
Jun temperature in England have not changed much if anything for the last 350 years.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
RockyRoad says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Does it really matter what they “predict” or what they “announce”? Today’s high was supposed to be 96 degrees here yet at 1:30 p.m. the “official” temperature is 83. I seriously doubt that the temperature will increase by 13 degrees in the next couple of hours, especially since we have a 13-mph breeze blowing. (Maybe they can find several acres of fresh asphalt to help their prediction along.) Call me skeptical if you want, but I’ve seen so many bogus temperature predictions in the past year or so where the actual high doesn’t even get close to the target temperature that I now believe they massage their predictions with a heated thermometer!”
Same thing has been happening here the last 2 weeks. For example, yesterday we were supposed to go to 91, and at noon it was 77. The high topped out at 83, which is average. And as warm as it was last week, we still didn’t come anywhere close to breaking records.
The same thing applies to last winter. Quite frankly, the forecasts suck. I wish I could be wrong that often and not get fired. We were paralyzed by that February storm because the planning committees at the public works department listened to the forecast. The Weather Channel predicted no more than 12 inches, which is a piece of cake to deal with, and the NWS predicted even less. We ended up with 25 inches of snow and they simply weren’t prepared for that.
R. Gates you are not 25% sceptic and 75% AGW. You are 25% optimist and 75% pessimist. You are just more receptive to negative messages. This is also why AGW does not take off with the public at large. The market is only as big as the pessimists. Maybe a worthwhile read for you and all the tipping point people is this. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-ridley/down-with-doom-how-the-wo_b_630792.html
toby, there is a significant difference between “fake” and – “inadequate” – “biased” – “inaccurate” and so on. It’s worth pointing out that recognising the limits of one’s instruments is not the same thing as believing they are somehow evil.
What is my bottom line? It’s not scientific, but it is analytical. I will give consideration to the reality of AGW when the political cadres who support it begin acting as though it is real.
This would mean an end to tree plantations as offsets, since plain arithmetic reveals this source of CO2 sequestration is both finite and inadequate. Besides, as agriculture becomes more marginal, more land will be needed for food, not less.
It would mean an end to conspicuous consumption by any and all proponents of the theory.
It would mean a serious and sudden interest in replacing our base-load electricity generation with dependable base-load generation from nuclear and hydroelectric plants rather than corporate greenwashing with net-energy-loss technologies like solar.
At that point I will reconsider my disbelief. But your basic premise is wrong. Scepticism is a “forever” condition. It’s a mental discipline that is always useful. Even when convinced, it is worthwhile understanding why and how someone else might remain unconvinced. It is worthwhile to remember that you, and those you trust, might be wrong. And in that context, one might reconsider the moral wisdom of bending the whole world to the yoke of one’s ideology.
Civil Servents tend to take their que from the Political Appointee in charge of their shop, office, agency, department. It’s a form of self protection. If you want to get along and move along, ya gotta’ go along. NOAA –and every other government office– toes that line, toats that bail, and says Yes, Sir or Ma’am, every minute of every day. It’s a lot like the Academic environment. And every other form of human endeavour.
PS: I keep getting the impression that R.Gates isn’t listening (and hasn’t been for some time). His pleas for help in understanding this or that seem to be more a ploy to shift or hyjack the discussion.
If R. Gates really is 25% sceptic, he should be congratulated on progressing intellectually. At this rate he will be at 100% by 2013 (but then so will practically everybody else).
Now, if he could make his contributions a bit (well, a lot) shorter, I might also take the time to read them.
toby asks: So how long does a scientifically-minded person persist with a belief if the empirical data continually shows the opposite?
The funny thing is, that is the exact question skeptics/climate realists have been asking of the CAGW/CC Believers all along. The empirical data show that C02 is simply not a problem, and in fact is beneficial. But Alarmists don’t want to see it, or hear it, or allow anyone else to, and in fact simply want anyone who claims otherwise to shut up. That is why they claim an “overwhelming scientific consensus”, and have tried to keep skeptic papers or views from being published, why skeptics have been sidelined, and shut out, and why the rallying cry has been “the debate is over!” The actual science simply isn’t on their side, and on some level they know it.
The planet is currently warming, and that is fact.
Actually, your statement of “fact” is completely meaningless without context. Yes, there has been some warming since the LIA. That is to be expected, and within the range of natural variation (a phrase some Warmists seem to dislike intensely). Plus, the actual extent of warming is also highly in question, due to UHI, station drop-out and incorrect placement, etc.
But scepticism is not a forever condition.
Correct. Nor, one would hope, is Alarmism a forever condition The more you read about it, though, the more you will realize we have nothing to fear from AGW, other than the Alarmism itself, and the consequent and harmful reactions based on that Alarmism.