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.
Shows a good (partial) agreement with US population density map. Except for Florida and Gulf coast. But in other regions you can clearly see the population hot spots. UHI?
NoAstronomer says:
No way are we 2-degrees above normal as the top graphic indicates. So I’d really like to see the numbers behind it.
Well, I’ve taken the GHCN V2 data for up to 2/2010 and put it on a graph: doing anomalies as “data item vs (average of that thermometer for each given month)” and found a very odd change in the data in about 1990. I’ve not done this on the present data but I’ll do it in a week or so when the current month is updated. IMHO, the data are corrupted in some way.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/agw-jumping-sharks-since-1986/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/agdataw-begins-in-1990/
Please note that this is not the same as the iterative approach I used in the dT/dt method (that compares each thermometer reading to the next reading going backward in time from the present) yet yields very similar results. The method used for these charts is a fairly simple standard form of “average all the data, subtract that from the datum to make the anomaly”. The only ‘unique’ thing about it is that I do this for each individual thermometer and within each individual month. No blending, homogenizing, in-filling, adjusting, etc…
It produces a profoundly different slope to the data after the late ’80s to 1990, right when a change of the “Duplicate Number” happens in GHCN (also called a ‘modification history flag’ in GIStemp code). That is, some process was changed then.
Here is a view of more recent data for the USA using the agricultural “degree days” method and a much broader set of thermometers:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/degree-days-view/
One valid purpose of WUWT is the global reach of readers and commenters. I find it quite interesting when people from all over comment that their local environment is not consistent with the global climate reports. I sometimes say the same thing about my local area, Los Angeles in southern California, USA.
This is a most valuable thing, as it does not take much for those in control of the global data to make up anything they want to suit the agenda they push so hard. If enough people from enough places say something like, “It may be warm globally, but certainly not here,” then the globalists’ claims can be shown to be false.
This is one way that attorneys refute the testimony of experts in a trial, by calling a great number of non-expert witnesses to testify against the expert. The jury soon realizes the expert is wrong.
Having said that, it has been abnormally cold in Los Angeles all of this year.
Just remember this: If the following NH winter follows the pattern of the current SH winter, you’ll be more than surprised. Buy more popcorn!
BTW: The authors of the above report will be fired in the next few hours.
They can not oppose the most Holy Church of Global Warming and embarrass their most holy prophets.
I have an off-ish topic question for someone.
We’ve all been hearing about how the first half of the year was “the warmest half year ever” and how “June 2010 was the hottest ever on record”. I’m curious. We are just coming out of a fairly strong El Nino condition. What is the general lag time of temps to normalize after El Nino fades? Would the El Nino effects on climate and temps be responsible for the
higheralarming temperature readings?regeya says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:15 am
“The real bummer for our area is that we HAVE been above average (no way in hell are we only 0-2 degrees above average in my part of Illinois, I wasn’t born yesterday…we usually only have a handful of days in the high 90s, nearly every day since the beginning of June until yesterday has been hotter than blue blazes) and nighttime temperatures have been staying warm enough that veggies aren’t producing.”
regeya, it isn’t the temperatures that prevent plants from growing or producing. It is soil content and moisture and light exposure. Consider recent studies in Mexico concerning future crop failure(with a focus on corn). I’d take a guess and venture even if you’re experiencing warmer than average in Illinois, those temps won’t even come to the average in Mexico. Heat doesn’t hurt crop growth for any crop of which I’m aware. Warmth helps crops, its the cold that kills them.
What about Alaska? Is it now an island? Have you sold it to the Chinese to pay your national debt?
[REPLY – Does Urban Heat Island count? ~ Evan]
Overall, actually, things are beginning to warm back up a little as this cycle begins to ramp up, just like the last cycle. The solar wind is up and though it looks whomper-jawwed polarity its getting sunspots done now. This cycle is maybe going to be long and windy with another double peak possibly.
Question is how much volcanic activity ramps up along with it. It clearly does during the ramp down and then again during ramp up. And the minimums go ever deeper now. Go here and type in specific years for comparison.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
But remember too that the beginning of the LIA was 1250 (disputed) with a lot of rain but the coldest part didn’t happen until the 1800’s.
markinaustin says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:26 am
but i can’t get UAH here is where i used to check the data but it hasn’t updated since February:
If you want UAH data in the same format you are using now the go here.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.3
Note it is a new product number 5.3 so back up 5.2 and replace the entire set with 5.3.
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. Why not look at global data instead
Only NASA shows record temperatures. Satellite data and even HadCRU do not. NASA has diverged measurably recently and is a bit of an outlier.
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? ”
I’ve heard that the contiguous US has the most (or among the most) reliable historical & current temperature record, so using it as a check to global trends makes sense.
James Sexton says: I’d take a guess and venture even if you’re experiencing warmer than average in Illinois, those temps won’t even come to the average in Mexico. Heat doesn’t hurt crop growth for any crop of which I’m aware. Warmth helps crops, its the cold that kills them.
Don’t know if they have their maps on line or not, but if you get a copy of the Sunset Garden Book for the nation and look at the growing season bars on each map, that place which is the hottest, near Phoenix Arizona, has a unique bar on it that marks the temperatures where plants DO start to suffer and stop growing. It is at about 120 F IIRC. This causes the dead middle of the summer to be unsuited to some plants.
The most interesting bit? MUCH more total time is ADDED to the growing year in winter, spring and fall than is lost in summer. So you can warm the whole planet up to the temperatures of Phoenix Arizona (where I’ts been 120+F quite a few times…) and STILL get more crops as long as you have water and fertilizer. (Soil is optional. Hydroponic lettuce, for example, is a large and growing segment of production.)
Phoenix is that very dark red splotch in the middle of Arizona in this “degree days” normals map:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/grasslinks-3509.png
and the area around Phoenix is one of the major growing regions of the country for things like Citrus and selected row crops. Heat is Good. Frost is BAD. At least when it comes to crops.
You can play with your own area with other maps here:
http://uspest.org/US/ddmaps.html
Steve, E.M,
I ran a 10 cent check on Western WA temps about a month ago, comparing to NOAA’s data then….. and they NOAA were more than 1 deg too warm for my area. I pulled the info from Accuweather. Looking at what E.M. linked to, and with everything else I’ve seen, (often from each of you) I suspect NOAA may be engaged in wholesale fraud on temp adjustments. It’s beyond tweaking.
E.M.Smith says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:12 am
In south America many vegetable prices have increased because of the record lower temperatures, so expect the same next NH winter.
BTW.-Next global warmers sinful pleasures jamboree at Cancun will be something to really enjoy watching…:-)
If I believed Barber, I would be planning my winter vacation for sunbathing in Barrow.
Chris Thompson says: Shows a good (partial) agreement with US population density map. Except for Florida and Gulf coast. But in other regions you can clearly see the population hot spots. UHI?
It’s even more dramatic how the cities are hot spots, as it a good distance around them, on the degree day maps that use a lot more thermometers (so you get better spacial resolution). It also looks like a heck of a lot of the GHCN thermometers are stuck in those hot spots, but I’ve not done the analysis, just eyeballed it.
milanovic says:
@stevengoddard
And what about your claim “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”
You claim it is incorrect that 2010 is (upto now) the hottest year ever. But how on earth do you want to prove that with US data only? When you accuse someone of giving incorrect information you should back that up, otherwise it is just slander.
Curb your barking, sparky… Hansen at GISS likes to regularly announce local and regional Hottest Ever rants. He had a “115 Year Record Hottest Ever” for the USA Western region a while back while it was nowhere near a record ever based on the real world. The simple reason is that GHCN uses thermometers stuck in hot places and warming places (like over 90% near all that lovely black tarmac and concrete at airports and near major cities).
So if THEY can rant about “hottest ever” in the USA (or even smaller subsets of it) then WE can look at subsets and cry foul when it doesn’t match reality. Gander, meet goose.
But I guess you know that 2010 is upto now the warmest or second warmest year on record, whether you look at data from nasa, noaa, hadcrut or UAH.
Yet when I look out my window, as when many folks look out there windows, we find cold all over the place, punctuated by some local hot spots. Not exactly a “CO2 kind of thing” at all. We’ve recently had the atmosphere thickness change rather a lot, and there is some indication of cloud changes along with cosmic ray changes. The net of all this is that I’m not so sure that the sats are giving proper results. For NASA, NOAA and HADCRUT they are all based roughly on GHCN with minor variations, and if you look at the links I posted above, that GHCN data is fairly suspect. I’ve dissected it at some length and it is just full of selection bias and locational biases in the thermometers.
Then all three use very similar processes to molest that data into fantastic claims that are not supported by reality. One example is that they all use short ‘baseline” periods of about 30 years. BY NECESSITY this will cause them to be comparing one set of thermometers in the baseline to a DIFFERENT set of thermometers in the reference periods before and after the baseline. This will introduce splice artifacts.
Now call me crazy (since I know folks on “your side” like to do that to folks and I’m an accommodating sort); but I’m much more impressed by the substantial LACK of individual records being set all over the planet. If it truly were “the hottest ever” globally, it ought to also be “the hottest ever” in a very large number of individual places. And it isn’t. Further, I’m much more impressed with the snows of winter in both hemisphere being a lot worse and a lot more equator-ward than in quite a while.
When it’s snowing on the Mediterranean shores, killing whole herds in Mongolia, killing children in Peru, and even into southern Brazil, well, I have trouble calling that “hottest ever”.
It looks to me like what we have is a very broken thermometer, and very clearly colder reality. And all my investigations of how those thermometers are handled confirms this fact. As does the
http://www.surfacestations.org/ process.
Western Washington temps are being skewed by above average temperatures January – March. Due to El Nino, they were significantly warmer than average last winter. But the months of April through July have been terribly cold, except for a few hot days in mid-July. Vegetable gardening has been frustrating and unproductive. The honey bees struggled to survive the spring – only a few made it as far as I can tell. My blooming perennials are consistently 4 weeks behind normal.
My electric bill shows the following daily average temps, 2009 vs 2010:
Jan 09 40 Jan 10 45
Feb 09 41 Feb 10 45
Mar 09 42 Mar 10 46
Apr 09 50 Apr 10 49
May 09 57 May 10 53
Jun 09 62 Jun 10 57
Jul 09 66 Jul 10 62
As La Nina takes hold, Washington State is falling rapidly into the “Blue Zone” of your map.
Sonicfrog says:
August 2, 2010 at 8:49 am
I have an off-ish topic question for someone.
We’ve all been hearing about how the first half of the year was “the warmest half year ever” and how “June 2010 was the hottest ever on record”. I’m curious. We are just coming out of a fairly strong El Nino condition. What is the general lag time of temps to normalize after El Nino fades? Would the El Nino effects on climate and temps be responsible for the higher alarming temperature readings?
__________________________________________
Take a look at Roy Spencer’s Latest Global Average Tropospheric Temperatures (satellite) . http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
He has lots of other info including a simple climate model.
Steve,
We were running a bit warm in Western WA when the El Nino was still present. The weather flipped like a switch when El Nino faded. The oceans mean everything. What hasn’t been clear is what drives those ocean temps up and down.
A microwave heats by exciting water molecules with wavelengths that cause resonance. What if TSI remained fairly constant, yet the composition of TSI, shifting slightly, sometimes increases the distribution of wavelengths to those that better excite seawater, warming the oceans, and driving the whole climate system up and down?
Ed Murphy says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:04 am
Overall, actually, things are beginning to warm back up a little as this cycle begins to ramp up, just like the last cycle…
Question is how much volcanic activity ramps up along with it…
___________________________________________________________
You might be interested in this study that looks at solar cycles & volcanoes combined effect on weather. Study of Dust in Ice Cores Shows Volcanic Eruptions Interfere with the Effect of Sunspots on Global Climate
MinB says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:08 am
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? ”
I’ve heard that the contiguous US has the most (or among the most) reliable historical & current temperature record, so using it as a check to global trends makes sense.
________________________________________________________________________-
A J Strata has an article about error in the temperature measurement that shows a map of the world with the error for the temperature readings from the IPCC report.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
My uncle was in Argentina shooting ducks and doves. Coldest hunting trip he has ever been on.
By the way, I will postulate the AGWing argument that this is the way it should be. The economic downturn has affected thermometers located near once busy but now dead, economic zones, especially at airports, and has frozen attitudes towards the current administration, thus providing false readings in need of adjustments.
E.M.Smith says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:49 am
“If it truly were “the hottest ever” globally, it ought to also be “the hottest ever” in a very large number of individual places. And it isn’t.”
Bingo.
Layne Blanchard says:
August 2, 2010 at 9:17 am
Steve, E.M,
I ran a 10 cent check on Western WA temps about a month ago, comparing to NOAA’s data then….. and they NOAA were more than 1 deg too warm for my area. I pulled the info from Accuweather. Looking at what E.M. linked to, and with everything else I’ve seen, (often from each of you) I suspect NOAA may be engaged in wholesale fraud on temp adjustments. It’s beyond tweaking.
_____________________________________________________
I agree. Wunderground adds between 0 and 5F to the lows and highs for a nearby city the next day. It is very irritating. This is probably due to the data being “adjust” with the Raleigh NC data instead of the Fayetteville NC data.
Pamela
Remember that South America doesn’t count. Neither does the US or Siberia. The North Pole only counts if you have no data. The South Pole doesn’t count because of ozone. Europe normally doesn’t count, except for two weeks in 2003 and 2010. La Nina doesn’t count either.
La Nina is just plain cheating!