By Steve Goddard
The National Wildlife Federation has quite a history of stretching the truth when it comes to “global warming.” But I think they have outdone themselves.
This summer’s stifling, deadly heat along the Eastern Seaboard and Deep South could be a preview of summers to come over the next few decades, according to a report about global warming to be published Wednesday by the National Wildlife Federation and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. In fact, according to NWF climate scientist Amanda Staudt, the summer of 2010 might actually be considered mild compared with the typical summers in the future. “We all think this summer is miserable, but it’s nothing compared to what’s in store for us,” she says. … The report, a supplement to a 2009 report on heat waves, notes that more extremely hot summer days are projected for every part of the country by the year 2050: “Summers like the current one, or even worse, will become the norm by 2050 if global warming pollution continues to increase unabated.”
Interesting theory! Only problem is that summers have been generally getting cooler across those regions for the last 80 years. Below are the NCDC summer (Jun-Aug) trend graphs for all of the states discussed in the article. More than half of those states have seen declining summer temperatures, and the average trend is -0.1°F per century.
Temperature degF / Decade Louisiana 81.17 0.01 Mississippi 79.75 -0.15 Alabama 78.96 -0.15 Florida 80.93 0.08 Georgia 78.9 -0.1 South Carolina 78.55 -0.03 North Carolina 75.8 -0.02 Virginia 73.41 -0.06 Maryland 73.34 0.09 Delaware 74.15 0.14 New Jersey 72.23 0.08 Pennsylvania 68.98 -0.15 New York 66.83 -0.08 Connecticut 68.97 0.12 Rhode Island 68.77 0.18 Massachusetts 68.15 -0.02 New Hampshire 65.41 0.04 Vermont 65.24 -0.07 Maine 63.84 -0.1
As CO2 has increased from 330 ppm to 393 ppm, summer temperatures have declined.
But it gets worse. Note in the plot below that the states with the highest population density generally also have the highest temperature trends. There is a UHI signal which is corrupting the temperature trend. NCDC is supposed to adjust for UHI, but it is pretty clear that they are not doing a good job. Rhode Island has the second highest population density in the US, and the highest summer temperature trend in the group.
If UHI was properly adjusted for, there would likely be little or no upwards trend in most of the states which currently show one.
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.
Apparently NWF believes that three weeks of hot July weather is more significant than a couple of centuries of climate data. Because hot weather is climate – when it is your job to shout fire in a crowded theatre.
Louisiana
Mississippi
Alabama
Georgia
Florida
South Carolina
North Carolina
Virginia
Maryland
Delaware
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
New York
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Vermont
Maine
Most of the controversy about warming is caused by people who sit in an airconditioned office, when they go outside they think “Jesus it’s hot! it must be true about global warming”Should try living without airconditioning to expirience REAL weather and seasonal patterns.
Don E says:
August 13, 2010 at 9:35 am
Why start at 1930?
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Djon says:
August 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm
stevengoddard,
“Is there some reason why we should care about warming which occurred prior to 1930?”…..
Is there something magical about an 80 year period other than that it gives you a result you like?
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wwf says:
August 13, 2010 at 4:31 pm
The peak-to-peak argument is nonsense – there is no evidence or reason for any 80-year cycle and merely provides a means for which Steve Goddard has cherry picked a covenient period to provide these plots. As far as I’m concerned that makes the argument a fabrication.
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Looks like you will have to PROVE it is ” the argument a fabrication.” because the cycle is clearly visible in my nearby city, Fayetteville NC Here is the raw 1856 to current Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Amazing how the temperatures follow the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) as long as the weather station is not sitting at an airport isn’t it? You will notice the cycle is about 70 years or so long.
In addition to the 70-80 year NAO cycle, there is also a 80 year sunspot cycle, called the Wolf-Gleissberg cycle, therefore Goddard’s choice of 1930 to the present makes a lot of sense since it includes both a full NAO and a full Wolf Cycle without getting into a time period with uncalibrated thermometers and spotty records.
Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 8, 1983-1999.
JournalofCosmology.com, June, 2010
The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity
S. Duhau, Ph.D.,
Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428, Bs. As. Argentina.
and C. de Jager, Ph.D.,
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research; P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands.
Summary and Conclusions
“The dynamo system evolves over three kind of quasi-harmonic episodes separated by brief chaotic transitions. These episodes are well represented by a superposition of a cycle and two quasi-harmonic modes: the Gleissberg cycle, the semi-secular and its first quasi-harmonic, the bi-decadal oscillations, around the Transition State (Duhau and de Jager, 2008, De Jager and Duhau, 2009) A transition to a Grand (M or H) Episode occurs only when the three modes are passing simultaneously through the zero point. At that moment the tachocline-convective layer motions are going through a north/south symmetry. Evidence of this fact is provided by the observation of Mursula and Zeiger (2001) that the heliospheric magnetic field changed from northward to southward symmetry around 1930, which is at the time of ending of the 1924 transition…..” http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html
So there is a second reason for using 1930 as the starting point.
The North Atlantic Oscillation: Past, present, and future
1. Martin H. Visbeck * , †,
2. James W. Hurrell ‡,
3. Lorenzo Polvani §, and
4. Heidi M. Cullen
Abstract
The climate of the Atlantic sector exhibits considerable variability on a wide range of time scales. A substantial portion is associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a hemispheric meridional oscillation in atmospheric mass with centers of action near Iceland and over the subtropical Atlantic. NAO-related impacts on winter climate extend from Florida to Greenland and from northwestern Africa over Europe far into northern Asia. Over the last 3 decades, the phase of the NAO has been shifting from mostly negative to mostly positive index values. Much remains to be learned about the mechanisms that produce such low frequency changes in the North Atlantic climate, but it seems increasingly likely that human activities are playing a significant role.
When the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is in its positive phase, low-pressure anomalies over the Icelandic region and throughout the Arctic combine with high-pressure anomalies across the subtropical Atlantic to produce stronger-than-average westerlies across the midlatitudes. During a positive NAO, conditions are colder and drier than average over the northwestern Atlantic and Mediterranean regions… ” http://www.pnas.org/content/98/23/12876.full
THE SOLAR WOLF-GLEISSBERG CYCLE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE EARTH
Shahinaz M. Yousef
Astronomy &Meteorology Dept.
Faculty of Science -Cairo University
ABSTRACT– “The only continuous solar observations that extend over the important climatic time scale of decades to centuries are those of sunspots, yielding a measure of magnetic activity. There are evidences for the modulation of the amplitude of the 11year solar cycle in a period of about 80 years known as Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. The Cycle seems to be fairly clear in the sunspot record and in its proxy measurements by cosmogenic isotopes. The cycle appears to show up in many meteorological parameters, suggesting that there may be an important sun/climate connection over long periods of time(Hoyt and Schatten 1997)…..” http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
It would seem Goddard’s choice is backed up with peer reviewed papers.