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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It is warm where it matters… The population centers of the northeast. That is all that the alarmists care about. Large numbers of people, and liberal people for the most part, in their heated crosshairs.
David L: you can find the stations near Philadelphia here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/findstation.py?lat=39.95&lon=-75.15&datatype=gistemp&data_set=0
There’s a rural station at Indian Mills that has data since 1901.
The start page for finding the data anywhere in the world is here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
I belived the mystery with GISS lies at the pole. NASA extrapolates and fills in the empty grid cells at the poles based on some undocumented extrapolation alogrithim. If you subtract the poles from the GISS data sets, you subtract out much of the “record” heat.
Steve, your comment about Philadelphia being 1 deg cooler than average peaked my interest considering that I live there. It seems you can glean different conclusions from the data based on how you look at it (surprise!). Based on average temp, which is (high+low)/2, we are slightly cooler than the “historical average”. But if you look at “average high” (sum of all highs in Jul)/31 we were at 90 F, which is 7 F above the historical “average high” of 83. So which is a more meaningful statistic? I understand that the average temp better represents the total heat content in atmosphere. But is it any wonder that folks are convinced it is getting hotter out when the daily high temp is consistently above the average? Any what is the explanation for that? UHI?
FWIW, having lived in this area all my life it doesn’t feel any hotter this year than normal. But I was shocked to discover that the average high is 83 July. I was expecting 90.
With all arguments brought in to show that the US , 2% of the global surface , is actually cooling what are you imagining that the answer of the agw-proponents will be ? This is proof of lowering of CO2-emissions caused by their multi year efforts to change our society and that the first real implementations are starting to bear fruit as indicated by falling us temperatures contrary to the overheating in the arctic and in the antarctic leading to a larger supply of sweetwater freezing faster than the saline water did before . This is unmistakeable proof that the efforts of the USA as the forefront of climatological hygiene are clearly visible and we shall demonstrate the world that our practices for the come-on good are working . Of course this is baloney , but be sure that you are going to see a lot more of it to get cap and trade installed .
In south central Texas we just had two 100 degree days back to back. These were the first two days over 100 this summer. Last year when El Nino was bustin’ chops by this date we had 42 days over 100.
Not that a few degrees above/below average is a big thing. Amount of rainfall is far more important. El Nino warm/wet, La Nina cool/dry. Rainfall is still above average so far (knock on wood).
Hi Paul,
I bet your humidity was on average lower this year. That will cause hotter days and cooler nights which won’t effect average but will sure effect the sum of daytime highs.
Woodentop writes:
“The bills are starting to come in for this buffoonery. The Scottish Government’s “ambitious” climate change act is expected to cost £8 billion pounds (Sterling) over the next decade, whilst lowering CO2 emissions by 42% (as if).”
Unbelievable!!! Flabbergasting!!! It is hard to find a source of CO2 in Scotland! I guess they could export all the sheep, but then the country would be less cozy for the tourists, who make up about fifty percent of its GDP. Someone in Scotland pulled off the biggest scam in the history of mankind.
Paul : “Any [idea] what is the explanation for that?”
What I noticed this summer has been, up until recently, the fairly low humidity. So cloud cover has been minimal. So the daytime temperature has climbed pretty high. But night time temperatures have dropped too because the heat has not been retained.
Bingo!
Reducing carbon footprint will cause economic slowdown at the least convenient time. Possibly triggering a deep global depression. How much are we willing to gamble, indeed!
If economic output is reduced there will fewer resources available for alternative energy research & development. What a fine mess that would be.
Jim G says:
August 2, 2010 at 11:59 am
Natural insulation consists of the Earth itself. If a portion of your home is below ground, it will be warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
I can’t recall a colder wetter spring and summer in Western Washington in my 46 years than this year. Whomever put us in the warmer than usual column is not from here.
A very interesting site is the OK Mesonet http://agweather.mesonet.org/
Under the “learn more” tab….
“The Oklahoma Mesonet consists of 120 automated stations across Oklahoma. There is at least one Mesonet station in each of Oklahoma’s 77 counties. At each site, the environment is measured by a set of instruments located on or near a 10-meter-tall tower. The measurements are packaged into “observations” every 5 minutes, then the observations are transmitted to a central facility every 5 minutes, 24 hours per day year-round. The Oklahoma Climatological Survey at OU receives the observations, verifies the quality of the data and provides the data to Mesonet customers. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes from the time the measurements are acquired until they become available to the public. ”
They have photos of all the sites, actually you can check out the location from multiple views. Even the ones in OKC are located in fields, away from anything that could generate heat. A very interesting site to check out. If only all weather recording sites were this open for all to see.
It’s been a “Mark Twain” summer here in SF area. To quote Mr. Twain: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Very true this year.
Were he alive today I would imagine he’d change it to “The coldest global warming I ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco.”
Well I just got back from doing a little bit of climatic research myself.
Specifically; I assigned myself the task of researching the effect of the La Nina anomaly on the state of fishing in the Sea of Cortez; in the Loreto Bay Marine Sanctuary actually.
This time of the year; June through mid August is normally prime fishing time for Dorado/Mahi-mahi/Dolphin fish (Coryphaena hippurus) in the Loreto Bay region; and sport fishermen as well as meat fishermen descend on the town to fish them.
Tipping point (Scientific Term) for Dorado is a surface water Temperature of 30 deg C or 86 deg F whichever comes first; and air temperatures over the Sea are in the low 90s with relatively high humidity; so you sweat like a pig out there on the water.
So this year the air Temperatures over the Sea; about mid day were 88 deg F; with only moderate humidity; and the SSTs at least the top one cm of water were only 82 deg F by mid day.
So no to very little Dorado (I caught one), and no Sardinas; the common chumming baitfish. So even the Pelicanos were starving. The lack of Dorado, and Sailfish or Marlin was somewhat compensated by an unusual good number of big Rooster fish (Nematistius pectoralis). Usually only schoolie two pounders are around in small numbers; but this July, there were a good number of fish in the 35-55# range. My son and I double hooked one about 25#; which had a death wish; and sadly it did not survive so became dinner for our guide.
But I digress; I really wanted to do some independent climate research; well weather at least; and cloud formation to be specific.
On our final day (last Saturday) we spent about five hours idling along the Western shore of Isla Carmen; which is 6-9 miles off the Baja Peninsula opposite Loreto.
As the sun rose East of Carmen, I took some striking photos of a large swath of “clouderpuffs” that hung over the sea just West of the island; maybe at 2000 metres altitude +/- 50% (3:1 obligatory Climate fudge factor). They were very thin and transparent; and I could see the moon through one of the puffs; and they were going nowhere with not a breath of wind.
On the other hand; over the mainland, there was not a hint of a cloud, and the morning sky was crystal blue with no haze.
This part of the Baja Peninsula has some very high steep mountain cliffs; and by road you have to sneak through the one pass about 20 miles or so South of Loreto; and are then barred from the Eastern coast for many miles by those steep impassable mountains.
Once the sun got up, the air temperature (in the shade) went to 88 deg F, and the surface water was again 82 deg F as it had been about every place I measured during the week.
At about 11 AM local time (MST) , a dozen or so wispy clouder puffs appeared over the very Eastern edge of the peninsula from Loreto south as far as I could see; once again at the higher end of the 2km or so height range. There were a handful of wispy lenticular clouds much higher > 10-12 km but out over the sea itself; but the interesting thing was these puff balls over the peninsula; well they were more like disks than balls; rather thin and all at the same height independent of the ground profile. They were highly diffuse white and shone in all directions; and they were not moving. Many of the individual puffs each cast a distinct shadow right on the peaks and steep walls of that Eastern edge of the mountsins; so you could see they were not moving relative to the ground.
As we moved slowly along the shores of the island, I watched those puff clouds grow and develop. The tops remained all at the same height, and the puffs slowly grew downwards in thickness, and expanded radially, so they eventually started to merge into larger accumulations; yet they moved in no direction from where they appeared; there simply was no detectable wind anywhere.
By 1:15 PM, when we finally bugged out for the shore and lunch, there was a long nearly unbroken line of thse clouds all sitting right on the Eastern edge of the land. The clouds had now thickened downwards to the point that they now were distinctly dark underneath; and they apparently had run into a brick wall, as the bottoms now had flattened out into a flat base, not unlike the trailing flatform behind a mid west thunderhead; and now the tops had started to grow cauliflower tops, and become quite three dimensional.
Well I’m no meteorologist so I don’t have any idea what causes all this observed behavior; but I do have a sort of hypothesis; pure conjecture you understand; as to what might have been happening; hypothetically of course, since I’m no expert.
The air Temperatures in downtown Loreto at 2:30 PM were in the low 90 deg F region with modest humidity; but the rock temperatures are a lot hotter than that.
So by 11 AM those high desert Mountains are hot hot hot, setting up a vertical air convection, that sucks up air right on the Eastern edge of the mountaisn where they join (and rise out of) the Sea of Cortez. (and of course also inland)
With the air Temperatures being 88 deg F in the air, and the SST being 82 deg F; it is clear that the air must be getting heated BY THE SUN, and not (much) by conduction from the sea surface. Water vapor in the air would intercept a significant amount of incoming sunlight longer than 750 nm; and heat the air; while the bulk of the solar spectrum would penetrate deeper into the sea (which is extremely clear); so it doesn’t have too much immediate effect on SST. LWIR thermal radiation from the atmosphere heated by the sun, and thermal radiation from the 82 degree sea surface captured by water vapor, and the all powerful CO2, seems to do little to elevate the SST; but there must be some small surface heating; but more likely offset by evaporative cooling; since the LWIR is absorbed in the top 10 microns or so (say 63% of it); so that would add more of that feedback H2O factor to the atmosphere.
This moisture enhanced air over the sea, will get sucked into the space vacated by the hot rocks updraft; and carried aloft to where temperatures are dropping.
Eventually at about 2km +/- 50% or so, the temperature reaches the dew point for that moisture content; and a thin cloud wisp forms.; casting a shadow on the rocks below. The top of the cloud wisp now starts reflecting sunlight back towards the sun; which is pretty much directly overhead; and other sunlight which penetrates the thin cloud is highly scattered from moisture droplets, and now radiateds from all sides of the thin cloud. The over head sun, is not even hitting the vertical sides of the cloud; so there really isn’t much (solar) reflection coming off those clouds; it is mostly from internal scatter.
So now the sunlight underneath the cloud is attenuated from albedo reflection on top, and internal scattered losses, as well as simple absorption by the water droplets in the cloud, and any water vapor.
So the air under the cloud starts to cool due to lower sunlight, so that too drops to the dew point, and the cloud thickens downwards. The colder air under the cloud cools the surrounding air column by conduction and or convection so the periphery of the cloud bottom cools, and the cloud diameter expands.
As the cloud thickens; the transmitted sunlight drops further, and eventually a visible darkening of the cloud bottom is detectable by eye; and probably much sooner with appropriate instrumentation.
So now we have a cooling air column building downwards from the bottom of the cloud; meeting a rising hot air column from the hot rocks of the mountains, and all containing a water vapor content that is preset by the SST and air Temperature over the Sea of Cortez adjacent to the mountains.
Eventually the cooling and hot air columns reach an altitude under the cloud; where the temperature can no longer fall below the dew point; the heat from the rocks is able to maintain the air Temperature above the rocks, without any help from the sun; and the cloud engine runs out of steam (pun intended) and the flat cloud bottom develops.
Of course the convective air flow doesn’t stop at this point so it keeps feeding moist air into the cloud layer, and the cloud starts to grow vertically as well as expanding its perimeter till the clouder puffs merge into a continuous layer; which gets darker on the bottom as the cloud thickens and blocks more sunlight.
By the time we got back to lunch; a continuous (more or less) string of clouds stretched all the way from Loreto South to the Horizon; sitting right on the edge of the land/sea interface.
Interestingly there was no cloud over Loreto itself; which must be something of an UCI; Urban Cool Island; since the natives have planted a whole lot of greenery throughout the town so even though the streets are damn hot; there is a lot of greenspace; enough to interrupt the cloud engine.
Yes a separate cloud string developed North of Loreto; but not as prominent; since the rocks are not as high and steep up there.
Well all of this of course is pure conjecture; with very little peer reviewed input; but it does suggest; to me at least; that in fact it DOES get colder under a cloud; and it doesn’t matter how thin and wispy or how high the cloud forms; it still cools down under the cloud; despite the arrival of vast quantities of heat either from vertical convection currents or LWIR EM radiation captured by GHGs including H2O and the might CO2.
Yes anecdotal of course; and I know you Meteorologists are laughing your heads off, at such a dumb idea; but I did say it was highly speculative; which really is in keeping with the finest traditions of climatology.
This blog is the grand champion of anecdotal, highly-localized evidence. True science at its best.
You seemed to have missed a very important word in NOAA’s report (here’s a hint, it’s right in the title). Give up? It’s global. I know it’s hard to understand, but there’s more to the world than the US.
Owen says:
August 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm
So well said Owen; and they expect to be taken seriously.
MJK
Tamsie
It is OK to extrapolate across 1200km with no data, and also to ignore the US because it has the wrong data.
Owen
NOAA is not anecdotal and the US is not local. It is the largest, longest and best temperature record available.
Paul
I didn’t say Philadelphia was cooler than average. I said it was cooler than the record.
Do the NOAA know something we don’t? We will have to wait and see how the party pooper turns out. :o)
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/glbT2mSea.gif
I am sorry, but we never get to normal in Reno. We are always above it in summer. Lows are 15 degrees above normal. Same with Bridgeport, down 395, that has no large population. Global warming at elevation is obvious. And the glaciers are melting down by Bridgeport.
Reading this and hinking about some of the weather I’ve seen lately, and having access to real-time once per second temperature data at the site of an industrial plant, it occurred to me today that there is another upwards bias in the modern temperature record (they all seem to be upwards, afterall). Maybe I’ve read about this on here?
Picture a bubble of of hot air near the asphault surface next to your local official airport weather station. This gets disturbed and just happens to drift over in the direction of the temperature sensor. It is going to cause a spike upwards. But modern electronic temperature elements are going to have a faster response time than an old-fashioned mercury thermometer. This, say, 105 def-F bubble of hot air might cause the sensor to register a short term spike to perhaps 101 on a 98 degree day whereas the old mercury thermometer might have only moved a degree or so in the time it took the bubble of hot air to pass, due to its slower response time.
If the old thermometers indeed had a slower response compared to modern electronic sensors, this couldn’t help but be upwardly biasing the modern temperature record.
milanovic says:
August 2, 2010 at 6:22 am
@stevengoddard
“Oh, indeed, only the second warmest year on record according to those data. ”
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Is it December the 31st 2010 yet or is this April 1st 2011?