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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“”” Owen says:
August 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm
This blog is the grand champion of anecdotal, highly-localized evidence. True science at its best. “””
The outcome of any single observation is purely anecdotal.
Next year, I will count the little cloudlets as they form and note the changes hour by hour, and then give you a nice statistical mathematics summary of the average behavior and the observed trend.
May be you can come back and read my next year’s results.
Mother Gaia made the clouds; I didn’t; I simply observed what appeared to be happening.
There’s an address line up above; type some words in it; any words and hit the enter key; Kia Ora !
Tamsie says:
August 2, 2010 at 3:27 pm
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.
———–
REPLY: There’s more to the world than the Russian heatwave. There’s more to the world than the 1976 UK heatwave. There’s more to the world than the 100s killed by cold in South America including the Amazon. The fact is local events are reported by alarmists as a sign of global warming and they ignore cold weather events. This blog can report what the hell it likes, if you don’t like it then produce your own hottist blog.
Tamsie says:
August 2, 2010 at 3:27 pm
“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.”
You might want to look at what’s going on with the Ocean temperatures.
Hint, they comprise 2/3rds of the earths surface and they are going down and have been since March.
To tamsie at 3:27pm –
I’m not sure what report you are looking at – the post title refers to continental US temperature and the NOAA map is of the US, not the world. And, I believe most people are talking about their observations in the United States.
Since we are here, we can help improve the weather reporting in the US by noting the differences of our observations vs the official reports. We can also observe the weather stations to see if they are properly sited.
We cannot control the reporting in other parts of the world.
But, by helping pointing out problems in the US reporting, we can only hope to help others improve the reporting in their countries.
John C says:
August 2, 2010 at 10:19 am
‘One of the main cores of scientific thought is to not make assumptions. Yet, the Anti-GW crowd are the worst offenders when it comes to ‘assumptions’ and bad science.’
“Bad Science” Like the “Hockey Stick” or the peer reviewed “Son of Hockey Stick” How about how everyone who was running Climate Models got together and decided the amplification number should be 2.5. Error bars so wide you could drive a Mac Truck through.
‘Is Global Warming used pawn in politics? Of course it is. Yet, this should not in any way change the body of scientific data that seems to show a trend on planet Earth.’
Is that trend cause by CO2?
My question is what are we willing to gamble for our future?
Would I gamble and not buy hurricane insurance if I lived in Colorado? Yes
And who could forget this:
“WE MUST GET RID OF THE MWP.”
I have written many articles in recent weeks discussing the discrepancies between GISS, HadCrut and satellite global temperatures, and how GISS is the only one showing 2010 as #1.
I always expect that readers will take the time to actually read the articles.
Reading this post, I had exactly the same question as Rick Bradford; what a surprise to see my question as the very first post! Challenged by TerryS, I did the computation; my result: an average cooling of 0.089 degrees per pixel.
I expect to post the Mathematica notebook with the arithmetic publicly, in case anyone is curious.
Karen says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:08 am
From Climate4you.com it looks like climatologists are using 1960 to 1990 as the “Normal” time period.
[REPLY – NASA/GISS uses 1950 – 1980 as its baseline. ~ Evan]
The Australian Bureau of Met states:
It is also worth noting that the period 1961-90 is regarded internationally as the standard reference period
That’s why I love standards – there are so many to choose from.
Here in central Virginia we have just gone through record heat for both June and July, and an all-time record for days with highs of 100 or higher (10 so far this summer; old record 9; another forecast for this coming Thursday). So it’s been hot; unpleasantly so. We also had snow on the ground continuously from Dec 18 09 to March 5 10; I doubt that’s a record, but it was a long time for snow cover here. The latest explanation for the heat is that the Jet Stream has remained so far north; alternately, the Bermuda High has moved inland and sat right over us. It’s been most dry for a couple of months also; four tenths of an inch today was most welcome (and strictly local; people of the far side of Richmond missed it).
I have a hard time thinking that CO2 can move the jet stream, or the Bermuda High either. If these factors have prevented cool air from getting here, I certainly had nothing to do with it, nor did my friends with SUVs.
Note that the GISS anomaly is based on the daily means. The daily means are affected as much by the change in daily minimum as much as, or more than the change in the daily max. So the high temperature may not change, but if the overnight low is higher, then the daily mean will be higher, thus the anomaly will be higher . Higher overnight lows can be attributed to UHI.
Here too, it’s been cooler than normal.
KSJC Yearly Chart 2010
It always amazes me that people who ask this question are still using computers, probably driving cars, consuming, etc. Oh, they’ve got twisty light bulbs now, conscience consoled.
If “clean” energy makes sense, then it will stand on its own merits, and will not need to be subsidized by taxpayers. We could all be driving natural gas vehicles right now, which would seriously reduce CO2 emissions. So why hasn’t this been done? Because the goal isn’t to reduce carbon emissions, the goal is to de-industrialize the West, and to keep the developing world from developing. Of course the eco-elite will still be allowed their private jets and limousines, to “get the message out”.
I think they still got the west too warm! LA hasn’t strayed far out of the 60sF this summer – today is typical:
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_640x480.jpg
Haven’t you got a good friend Calif. climatologist friend who can comment on this Anthony?
While looking for some authoritative (in this sense, non-blog – not a reflection of my thinking about WUWT, mind you) information for the image above and the record warm year (yes, this one with all the cold events), I noticed that the past 12 months map was even more impressive, see
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/maps/current/index.php?action=viewmap&map_type=&daterange=Last12m&year=&product=TDept
What is that hot spot in California? It looks like it’s in mountains east of Bakersfield. Who know the area better than I do there. (Easy answer – almost everyone!)
Tamsie writes:
“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.”
We do not deal in fiction. And the Global Temperatue has always been a fiction, never justified by any sort of reasoning whatsoever. Reminds me of training engineers to use an linear programming model to distribute beverages around the US. When the model solved, it generated a number which was labelled the “cost of this shipping system.” It took me months to explain to some engineers that the number was simply an artifact of the solution method used in the model. I learned quickly that the best way of training engineers is to deliver a hard slap to the face whenever an idiotic claim is made. It works so well because, after my introduction of the technique, the engineers compete to be the first to slap the next engineer to utter an idiocy.
Dr. John M. Ware writes:
“The latest explanation for the heat is that the Jet Stream has remained so far north; alternately, the Bermuda High has moved inland and sat right over us.”
Yes, you are right. The heat in the East is caused by a high pressure system that is stalled over the northern east coast. The jet stream is high and you will get relief as soon as it moves south. Stalled highs are what cause great heat miseries in the midwest and they are rather common there. Once that high moves, your temperatures will trend down until you are back in the snow. It is good to know that good old Richmond continues to enjoy a huge amount of moisture annually.
The map shown is of the contiguous US, not the “continental” US. The continental US includes Alaska, the contiguous US doesn’t.
Ric Werme writes:
“What is that hot spot in California? It looks like it’s in mountains east of Bakersfield. Who know the area better than I do there. (Easy answer – almost everyone!)”
It’s just beyond the mountains. It’s a near-desert plain. Boeing has a facility on the southwest edge. It is not California, as the employees say.
Why don’t you just look to UAH tropospheric anomalies to convince yourself that this is an exceedingly warm year world-wide. Seems fairly evident, but means nothing unless that long-term running average continues to increase.
Steve,
I’d be willing to wager (figure of speech) that despite your di-chromatic analysis, the official NOAA report will have the U.S. as average or slightly above average for the month of July. Conspiracy? No. Your analysis neglects to weight each color in favor of doing a simplistic warm-versus-cold analysis.
Most of the below normal area was within 2F of “normal” whereas a significant fraction of the above-normal areas of the country were greater than 2F above normal. For that reason, I suspect the official report will not show the U.S. to be much below normal, if at all.
On a global note, the RSS data for July came out today; the July anomaly narrowly beat out July 1998 as the warmest July in the satellite record. Right now both UAH and RSS have 2010 behind only 1998 as warmest year through June. Similar to this year’s forecast, 1998 ended with a strong and lingering La Nina. It will be interesting to see how the two years compare over the remainder of 2010. It is how this year’s cool-down compares to 1998’s cool-down that will determine which year comes out on top.
wrote a small ruby script that processes this image w/o the binary +/- downsampling used in this post (red vs. blue). http://gist.github.com/505776 #read comments to get it working properly
output:
“weight freq
7 110
5 1428
3 5366
1 17780
-1 34463
-3 4116
-5 124
actual shows -0.08902456339628 degrees C below average
WUWT shows -0.221165223153012 degrees C below average ( 248% difference )”
average is below baseline, though high’s go higher than the lows go low
I remember when the El Nino of 1998 was used by global warmers as proof of global warming because of how quickly it got warm that year. But then years went by and no year after that was warmer than 1998. So then the 1998 El Nino became an enemy of global warmers. They started saying it didn’t count because it was an El Nino and was anomalous to the real temperatures which continued going up if you deleted the El Nino out of the record.
Now the El Nino of 2009/10 is the friend of global warmers. But with the earth continuing to cool that El Nino will soon also become their enemy. They will find some rationale to make the record show warming is continuing if you delete the 2009/10 El Nino from the record.
Travis
NOAA will have the US well above average for July.
George E. Smith says:
August 2, 2010 at 4:32 pm
“”” Owen says:
August 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm
This blog is the grand champion of anecdotal, highly-localized evidence. True science at its best. “””
———————–
The outcome of any single observation is purely anecdotal.
_____________________________________________________________
Actually the original comment shows how slipshod science seems to have become. As a chemistry student, the discovery of argon gas, were the very accurate record keeping including whether or not the laboratory door was closed or open, was used to illustrate how important keeping very complete records of seemingly unimportant data in you lab notebook was.
Climate is just long term weather and weather is local, therefore observation of specific phenomena can certainly advance science. It seems computer models and satellites have convinced some that direct observation and experimental science is some how obsolete.
“Commenting on the discovery of thoron gas because one of Rutherford’s students had found his measurements of the ionizing property of thorium were variable. His results even seemed to relate to whether the laboratory door was closed or open. After considering the problem, Rutherford realized a radioactive gas was emitted by thorium, which hovered close to the metal sample, adding to its radioactivity—unless it was dissipated by air drafts from an open door. (Thoron was later found to be argon.)” http://www.todayinsci.com/QuotationsCategories/D_Cat/Discovery-Quotations.htm
Seems even the reporting of the actual incident has become slipshod. The lab notebook with the records belonged to a guy named Owen as I recall.
My last comment needs some correction since Steve’s map from HPRCC shows the year-to-date temperatures for the U.S., not the month of July. My point remains, however; when NOAA comes out with the year-to-date temperatures for the U.S. through July, I expect they will show that the country as a whole was roughly at or above “normal” for the seven-month period.
Consequently, HPRCC’s July map clearly shows the U.S. above normal as a whole. Even California–which got a lot of attention here for having cool temperatures in coastal cities like San Diego and San Francisco–probably finished the month above normal as a state; the cooler-than-normal temperatures were confined mainly to the coastal regions.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/maps/current/index.php?action=viewmap&map_type=&daterange=Last1m&year=&product=TDept
Travis says:
August 2, 2010 at 8:09 pm
“I’d be willing to wager (figure of speech) that despite your di-chromatic analysis, the official NOAA report will have the U.S. as average or slightly above average for the month of July. Conspiracy? No. Your analysis neglects to weight each color in favor of doing a simplistic warm-versus-cold analysis. ….”
You’d probably lose the figurative wager, read the post below.
San Francisco James says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:26 pm
“Reading this post, I had exactly the same question as Rick Bradford; what a surprise to see my question as the very first post! Challenged by TerryS, I did the computation; my result: an average cooling of 0.089 degrees per pixel.
I expect to post the Mathematica notebook with the arithmetic publicly, in case anyone is curious.”
SF James, I’d like you to let us know when you do. Thanks.