By Steve Goddard
This map below is from the NOAA High Plains Regional Climate Center and shows the continental USA as “departure from normal for Jan1st, 2010 to July 31, 2010:
Source: http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/YearTDeptUS.png
We keep hearing from NOAA and in the press about 2010 being the hottest year ever. Apparently, objective and unbiased scientists are rushing this incorrect information to press before La Niña spoils their party, and before the ruling party gets tossed out of Congress. An analysis of the above and below normal portions of the map yields some surprising data that contrasts with recent “official” announcements.
El Niño is now fading, La Niña is coming on strong:
So how are things looking in the US? Despite the second strongest El Niño on record, 62% of the US has had below normal temperatures for the year so far. To make things clearer, I split the lower 48 up into above and below normal regions by combining pixels to a two color map.
Using a pixel counting graphics program, I counted the pixels that were above normal and below normal. To be precise, there are 86,725 pixels below normal, and 53,336 pixels above normal. Total red and blue pixels is 140,061. With 86,725 pixels below normal this yields 61.9%.
As La Niña takes hold, we should see the percentage below normal increase.
Philadelphia finished July with an average temperature of 80F. That is one degree cooler than the years 1793 and 1838, and tied July 1791, 1798, 1822, 1825, 1828, and 1830. July was almost as hot as it was 217 years ago, when CO2 was at 290 ppm.
We live in interesting times.
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Now, thanks to that map it makes perfect sense. Washington D.C. and New York have had above average temperatures this year, and *everyone* in Government and the MSM knows that those are the only 2 cities in the world that count for anything at all.
So if D.C. and N.Y. are warming, then the whole world MUST be warming! Because that’s obviously the only part of the world that counts!
There is no doubt about it….the cooling is happening. I have to say I am a real fan of the pixel count.
The strong El Nino managed to pull the PDO out of the negative briefly and by a very small margin. The future is heavy weighted with a cooling bias which is influenced by ocean/atmosphere cycles that are solar driven. These coincide with a quiet Sun which adds to the dilemma.
The next northern hemisphere winter will be huge.
In that two color map, what caused those little red spots in the predominately blue areas? Temp sensors badly placed?
Milanovic writes:
“What nonsense. You know just as well as I do (I hope!) that it is meaningless to look at US data only. Nobody said that US temperatures were record-high.”
Are you in the US? We have been bombarded from every side by claims that not only is this the warmest year ever in the US and worldwide but that the warmth in the US proves AGW. For those of us in the US, this is part of an on-going conversation and argument.
What’s interesting is that the 30 year climate base of 1971-2000 will switch over to 1981-2010 next year here in the US. Not sure how much of a difference it would make to those anomaly maps, but if most places have an increase in their normals, look for larger negative anomalies on the cooler/colder weather.
jks says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:31 am
Summer was very late in coming to the Pacific Northwest. California included.
All NOAA’s ‘hottest ever’ did for them was to turn the local opinion against it.
It’s getting so bad that folks get up off thier duffs to change the channel when the Warmists start in with thier fire & AGWstone sermons. Isnt’ Sunday morning supposed to be the Religious TV slot?
899 says:
August 2, 2010 at 4:11 am
“Relatively speaking, Western Washington has been COOLER and NOT warmer as the map seems to illustrate.”
Jan,Feb,March were warmer then normal. It’s been downhill since as Western Washington temps are governed by Pacific Ocean Temps.
Ric Werme writes:
Lack of sun implies lack of stars, implies lack of radiational cooling. Perhaps the daily average wasn’t that far from “normal” with elevated low temps offsetting depressed high temps.
You might think so, but the lows have been unusually low as well.
Steve,
….and for the rest of the globe? Why continue to cherry pick? If you want to shoot down “official” predictions about global temperatures why continue to make your point with regional figures. Where is the objective and unbiased reporting we are promised from this site?
MJK
About the last comment on the Philly July temps being cooler than in years in the 1700’s and 1800’s – I would suspect that the urban heat effect on temperatures is even worse now than during those times.
And wasn’t there a post on this site that described a silly method that made it being the “warmest winter ever” – something like taking the days from November-March and only recording the 15 highest temps days, not even an average highs of all days. And, this method was an “official” one. I need to keep track of all those “you gotta be kidding posts”.
james brisland says:
August 2, 2010 at 4:45 am
This is all good news. I knew that the cold weather in the Northern hemisphere this winter was below average….
The main problem for us all, in the realist camp, is how do we get this sort of information into the Main Stream Media?
They seem oblivious to any of this information especially the BBC……
__________________________________________________________________
The Main Stream Media is not interested. The BBC pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, “Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment. “
The Media is owned by by five major companies they are:
Time Warner
VIACOM
Vivendi Universal
Walt Disney
News Corp
The 5 companies own 95% of the media . They own entertainment theme parks, movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks and programing, video news and sports entertainment.
Source: http://hubpages.com/hub/Mass-Media-Influence-on-Society
I am sure a lot of those companies are also hoping to make a killing in the Carbon Credit Derivatives Market. (It is called diversifying.)
So get ready for subprime carbon, cap and trade another derivatives market.
(read another way for banks to hose the public)
British-born Blyth Masters from JP Morgan “… was one of the financial engineers who invented credit derivatives. As we know now, credit derivatives were designed to remove risk from a company’s balance by creating artificial structures. Of course, all that did was encourage companies to take even bigger risks which helped create the mess we’re now in. In effect, she helped build a weapon of mass destruction.
Now we have Bloomberg reporting that the same woman is leading JP Morgan’s trade in carbon derivatives which are essentially aiming to do the same sort of thing by allowing companies to hedge a price over the longer term.
Bloomberg reports: “Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet…”
Doesn’t it give you a warm fuzzy feeling knowing the financial engineers who just collapsed the world economy are leading the way into the Brave New World, instead of sitting in jail?
(Where is Jim to jump on me and defend the bankers???)
mjk
The rest of the globe? Neither HadCrut, RRS nor UAH have 2010 as #1 so far.
ipilcher
yes
The more the pronouncements of the CAGW crowd diverge from the daily life experience of the people, the less they will be believed. Kind of like how great the progress of the great USSR was right up until Gorby fell and Yeltsin took over.
Joe Lalonde says:
August 2, 2010 at 4:35 am
The interesting times will have global warming conferences in snow storms.
And the really interesting times will be when people are hearing about global warming conferences while they are sitting in their cold house looking at their skyrocketing heating bill.
regeya said:
regeya, you will be relieved to know that Illinois crop yields will be potentially record-breaking this year. At worst, crop yields are predicted to be be above average. Here is an excerpt from a July 25th news article [1]:
regeya, surely this news will come as a relief to you. Additionally, given your grave concerns about how weather conditions impact crop yields in Illinois (which, as you mentioned, is heavily reliant on agriculture), you will no doubt consider this summer’s weather to be a blessing rather than a “bummer”.
1. http://www.thesouthern.com/news/local/article_12bf9ba0-97a6-11df-b321-001cc4c03286.html
It has been a gloriously warm summer in Wisconsin. I have observed an interesting psychological phenomenon among a number of people who have been convinced that AGW is real and dangerous. They can’t enjoy the nice weather.
Now, I must also say that the warm temperatures have been marred a bit by excessive rain – to the point where farmers have resorted to burning hay crops because after cutting they were never able to bail them. My dad simply can’t even get in the fields because the soil is so soft. So the hay just grows.
But anyway, I digress. What I have noticed is that this summer of consistent 80-85 degree weather – if not a farmer – has been a dream come true (especially given much cooler weather the last 3-4 years, and last year’s non-existent summer). And yet, I witness lamentation and grinding of teeth among people who are “concerned” that it’s too warm here.
If “too warm” means that I have the best watermelon crop in years, and most other plants are growing like gangbusters (except those intolerant of too much water) then sign me up for “too warm.”
People – enjoy it while you can. Last year’s ENSO reading took the largest one-month index plunge since the data I looked at starting in 1950. If Bob Tisdale’s proposed lag effects are accurate, that targets the impact of La Nina for winter.
Yay.
Lennart says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:35 am
How can you possibly state that this year would NOT be the warmest year ever recorded on the planet, by stating that 2% of the worlds area (being the USA) is not the warmest ever? There is actually more on this planet than the USA. Look for example in Russia (only twice the size of the USA) and Europe. ..
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He did (Moscow and surrounds hot, record cold elsewhere)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/01/kold-in-kazakhstan/
And South America and the Oceans (Record cold with 400 deaths)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/30/frozen-tropics-as-la-nina-takes-hold/
And the Arctic (below normal temp)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/28/giss-arctic-vs-dmi-arctic-differences-in-method/
And Australia (heat in areas without weather stations)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/27/the-australian-temperature-record-the-big-picture/
Not that it will make a huge difference, but is the map projection an equal area one? If not, you can’t really count pixels.
“Philadelphia finished July with an average temperature of 80F. That is one degree cooler than the years 1793 and 1838”
Yet, somehow, Philadelphia is in the warmer-than-usual area. I live on the New Jersey coast some 30 miles east of Philly.
I’d say we’re about normal. March and July were warm, but April, May and June were cool. After a hot July temperatures have slacked off a lot and we may be on the way down. There was dew on the car this morning.
No way are we 2-degrees above normal as the top graphic indicates. So I’d really like to see the numbers behind it.
ipilcher says:
August 2, 2010 at 6:40 am
The vast majority of this map appears to be in the 0 to -2 or 0 to +2 range. However, it also appears that the +2 to +4 and +4 to +6 and +6 to +8 cover more area than the corresponding below average temperatures. Therefore it seems that simply comparing the area of the above and below anomalies may be over simplifying this data. If the magnitude of the above and below temperatures are factored in, will the same conclusion be reached.
________________________________________________________________
It may be an optical illusion which is why Steve used pixels.
There are also areas of –2 to –4 and –4 to –6 However unlike the positive area that are clustered in the north east, those values are sprinkled throughout the lighter green.
rbateman says:
August 2, 2010 at 7:11 am
jks says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:31 am
Summer was very late in coming to the Pacific Northwest. California included.
All NOAA’s ‘hottest ever’ did for them was to turn the local opinion against it.
It’s getting so bad that folks get up off thier duffs to change the channel when the Warmists start in with thier fire & AGWstone sermons. Isnt’ Sunday morning supposed to be the Religious TV slot?
_____________________________________________
I am not Religious, but I sure think Gaia has a sense of humor. Freeze the cojones off the fruits and nuts in the far west to wake them up and give the politicians a taste of the fires to come. snicker
Our friends at GISS and NCDC are just hoping that everyone forgets that it was the second snowiest winter on record in the northern hemisphere.
The BBC are desperately trying to link selected local events to their fire’N’floods narrative without actually saying it out loud.
In the minds of the viewer they have already implanted the idea of a world consumed by droughts and floods and fires and biblical furies so now all that needs to be done is carefully place stories side by side, flog them to death and hope the viewer draws the desired conclusions. The BBC seem to screaming ‘look we told you the world would descend into flames and flood and now look whats happening’.
The BBC has been studiously avoiding all stories about the very cold winter in the southern hemisphere as if they have placed a news blackout on the southern hemisphere for the duration, no news from the Antarctic that they last year claimed was about to enter a death spiral and a childish news blackout from south America and the Antipodes.
The BBC has become nothing less than a soviet style/Warsaw pact media outlet spewing political lies while hiding the truth from the people.
Sad and pathetic? Of course but the BBC is merely serving its own financial and political aims.
mjk says:
August 2, 2010 at 7:15 am
Steve,
….and for the rest of the globe? Why continue to cherry pick? If you want to shoot down “official” predictions about global temperatures why continue to make your point with regional figures. Where is the objective and unbiased reporting we are promised from this site?
MJK
________________________________________________
The reporting is by regions so we can discuss it better. See my other post at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/02/noaa-graphs-62-of-continental-us-below-normal-in-2010/#comment-445767