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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Travis says:
August 4, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Re: 899 August 4, 2010 at 8:50 am
What bbttxu said, except in reverse. The 30th to 40th rank was for U.S. temperatures ONLY. The warmest/second warmest rank applied to the GLOBAL mean, not just the U.S.
That’s not a logical statement.
As I see it, there are but three possibilities here:
[1] The U.S. data set has been corrupted
[2] The world data set has been corrupted
[3] Someone is manipulating data to make things ‘appear’ to be a certain way.
Of course there’s a fourth choice: All three are true.
I will go with choice four, and do so for the following reason: Climategate.
Re: 899
I’m not sure what you find illogical. Nothing in my statement (or rather NOAA’s) is contradictory. The U.S. was nowhere near its warmest, but other parts of the globe were sufficiently warm to make the global temperature mean as warm as it has ever been since they started keeping track of such things. What part of this is illogical? Am I not understanding your disagreement? What in that statement leads you to automatically conclude that the datasets are either corrupted or manipulated?
Re: 899 “That’s not a logical statement.”
This is really amazing. What logical fallacy can there be in a statement that the whole world experiences record warmth, while a certain part doesn’t.
I still hope to get my question to Steve Goddard answered if he is capable to back up his claim that “Apparently, objective and unbiased scientists are rushing this incorrect information”. If he can’t or doesn’t, he is simply slandering people without any evidence whatsoever.
Matches what I’ve seen. The folks indulging in temperature projection and extrapolation are going to look ever more silly as they move to crying ‘hottest ever’ during blizzards… Oh, wait, they’ve already done that.
Here is some information on 2010’s global temperature anomalies.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100813_globalstats.html
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/images/map-blended-mntp-201001-201007.gif