Looks like they’ve discovered what great heat sinks asphalt and concrete make:
From the National Resources Defense Council via press release posted at investorideas.com (h/t to Mark)
WORST SUMMER EVER? NEW ANALYSIS OF 2010 SUMMER HEAT TO HIGHLIGHT LITTLE-DISCUSSED “DARK SIDE OF CLIMATE CHANGE”: RECORD NIGHT-TIME TEMPERATURES IN U.S.
New Focus on Sweltering Highs in Night-Time Temperatures to Outline Risks to Human Health, Environment; Record Night-Time Highs Seen in More than Three Dozen States: AL, AZ, AR, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, WV, and WI.
WASHINGTON, D.C./NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL – September 15, 2010 (Investorideas.com renewable energy/green newswire) – While it is common knowledge that the summer of 2010 posted record-high temperatures across the United States, almost no attention has been paid so far to the equally disturbing trend of pervasive record high night-time temperatures where evening cooling did not occur this summer, according to a new analysis to be released at 11 a.m. EDT Thursday (September 16, 2010) by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
More than three dozen states (and a correspondingly significant share of the nation’s population) contain weather stations that recorded record high night-time temperatures, the “dark side of climate change” under which temperatures do not cool off overnight. The NRDC analysis breaks out the number of U.S. counties and their respective population that experienced these record night-time temperatures.
The 37 states with record high night-time temperatures highlighted in the report are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
News event speakers will be:
- Dan Lashof, director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council; and
- Kim Knowlton, senior scientist, Health Program, Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRDC analysis outlines the danger of heat deaths and other impacts that are linked to the growing problem of summer temperatures that do not drop overnight.
TO PARTICIPATE: You can join this live, phone-based news conference (with full, two-way Q&A) at 11 a.m. EDT on September 16, 2010 by dialing 1 (800) 860-2442. Ask for the “worst summer ever?” news event.
CAN’T PARTICIPATE?: A streaming audio replay of the news event will be available on the Web at http://www.nrdc.org as of 3 p.m. EDT on September 16, 2010.
CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, (703) 276-3265 or aawolf@hastingsgroup.com.
ABOUT NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national nonprofit organization with more than 1.3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment.
NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, MT, and Beijing. Visit NRDC on the Web at http://www.nrdc.org.
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Here’s an infrared photo of before and after at a USHCN climate station in Fayetteville, NC
Here is what you see in visible light:
Here is what the infrared camera sees:
Note that the concrete surface is around 22-24°C, while the grassy areas are between 12-19°C. This was shortly after a rain, about 2 hours before sunset. The rain did nearly nothing to cool down the concrete.
How many record nights do you have to have to make that list? One? We did NOT have a hot summer here in ND. Nothing like we’ve had other years. Just how stupid do they hope people are?
I don’t doubt the UHI component to this.
I am curious, tho, to what degree C02 and feedbacks add to this particular problem. By that, I mean, do we get more heat-trapping at night because of C02 and associated positive feedbacks, even if UHI is the primary storer of that heat during the day?
Climate Change is a great big complex problem with lots of moving parts.
HEAT ISLAND? Noooo. Who woulda thunk it? I’m perplexed. What about the tree ring data? (/sarcasm)
Seems like this is just a reflection of the persistent weather pattern we’ve had since spring; cooler than average in the west and warmer than average in the east. But of course the announcement didn’t say anything about the cool western summer.
Henry chance says:
September 15, 2010 at 6:47 pm
If we have higher dew points, the temps drop less at night time.
And if we have asphalt/concrete jungles we retain mucho heato! Have some dewpoint data you’d like to share?
Of course, if you re starting out warm in the morning, chances are you are going to be warmer during the day as well , thus the record highs. So, the logical solution to this truly human induced warming is that we destroy all the cities, re-vegetate these areas & go live in caves, right?? That would solve the problem. I am sure the NRDC would love that.
I work in the 1st tier suburbs here in MSP and drive back to my house in town every night at around 10pm (fyi I’m a 20yr+ meteorologist working in the field). Most nights the temperature diff from my office with it’s grassy’er surroundings is on average about 3F+ cooler than when I drive past the airport/mall of america and the vast expanse of concrete there. I’m just south of the river valley and once I climb up to the valley to this nearly solid area of concrete/asphalt the temp rises several degrees.
At sundown after a sunny day, if you can stand with one bare foot on your lawn and one on your sidewalk that has been in the sun all day you’ll feel the tremendous temp diff.
Good Gosh Y’all. I wish I could find some of my old reports from the late 70’s that dealt with this issue and heat sinks. How can this be a “new” finding? We have known about heat sinks for years. That is why we insulated the runway at Rankin Inlet, NWT, put in a metre of gravel to keep the heat out of permafrost. For some installations we used “heat pipes” to carry the heat away. I am amazed that this should be considered new information when it has been in the literature for years. It is why even when it is 30 below outside I can keep a 2000 square foot house heated with just two fires a day because of the mass of the masonary fireplace – two very hot, smokeless fires.
Haven’t we got years of night time temperatures showing this? Is this a surprise? Or perhaps my engineering memory is fogged by the present. As a meteorologist though, I imagine Anthony noticed this a long time ago.
It’s been remarkably cold along the coast of California. Here in Carlsbad, we hardly had a summer at all. We keep telling each other that it will get hot soon… but it hasn’t yet. The ocean is much cooler than usual. The tourists are much cooler too, and rather grumpy about it.
Oh, and the UHI apparently wasn’t obvious to the people who do studies? Where would you rather sit on a hot evening… on the sidewalk that was in the sun all day, or a nice cool lawn? Up against a west facing building, or where it has been shaded since before noon?
Someone should hit them with a clue bat. Metaphorically, of course.
In central Florida it was unusually cool the beginng of summer. Then when it finally heated up (mid July) about 95% of the days had afternoon clouds and thunerstorms which cooled everything nicely As a comparison, I take my daughter swimming in the local lake almost every evening. Last year the lake was very warm all summer. This year the lake has been cool even now. That thunderstorm thermostat really works.
vigilantfish says:
September 15, 2010 at 6:54 pm
The NDRC has done good work in the past decade in trying to make the US government face up to its role in allowing overfishing on the Georges Banks.
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Well if they had actually just focused on legitimate causes like that and not adopted the typical modern environmental flag waving, they might have gained more supporters, like me.
Unfortunately….they lost me on their national “ocean acidification” tour.
In a similar vein, I would support the ACLU in principle (civil liberties), but in practice they represent just one one-dimensional and extremely far left, political agenda.
So…they alienated me from the start. No chance of supporting that.
Point is, I applaud their efforts to halt overfishing.
But it is sad that all their other more vacuous agendas throw the good baby out with the dirty nasty bathwater.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Um, I live in Oklahoma and it has been the mildest August this year. We have had cool nights since early in August. Quite often September is quite warm but not this year. I am running the heat at night half the time. We never saw anywhere near 110 degrees all summer. And we close in on that pretty often too.
Wayne Delbeke says:
September 15, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Cynical me says…
Its a “NEW” discovery so that you can get money to do research on it…
no one is putting up money to research old (i.e. known) information.
, many previously known things will be “newly” discovered so that research funding
can continue to flow…
cheers J
A little known 2004 NOAA aerial survey reported that US manmade surfaces (Impervious Surface Area) are about equal in area to the state of Ohio. That’s a pretty big heat island!
The survey includes a national map. For more info see:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/guest-post-large-scale-climate-modification-agriculture-urban-heat-islands-are-changing-regional-and-continental-climates-by-bill-dipuccio/
Sorry, but I gag whenever I see “NRDC”. They’re the doofi who talked Clinton into canceling the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). If not for that, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
What we’re seeing is the reframing of climate change as a “public health issue”. This was discussed on WUWT a couple of months ago:
Notice that in the The Dark Side of Climate Change press release, NRDC is not discussing melting ice caps, species extinction, or the usual alarmist global warming themes we’ve come to expect. Instead they state:
Suddenly they’re concerned about our health and welfare. It’s an unusual about-face for an environmental advocacy group that normally places human needs last in their hierarchy of values. I’ve been seeing an increase in these sort of “public health” stories ever since reading the aforementioned climate change strategy. For example, in California there was a recent news story that interviewed nurses protesting at an appearance by Carly Fiorina (who is currently running against Boxer for the CA senate seat) over her support for Proposition 23 which seeks to overturn California’s disastrous AB32 climate change statute. Here is what the article stated:
This raises several important questions: Which group or groups is mobilizing these idiot nurses to protest at pro Prop 23 rallies and what are their motives? How does a harmless trace gas that we exhale and which is essential to all life on Earth contribute to an asthma epidemic in California? How will limiting CO2 emissions in CA prevent asthma in children? These questions are never actually discussed in the article, which you can read here:
http://marinscope.com/articles/2010/09/15/mill_valley_herald/news/doc4c90fb5e38aeb843796984.txt
Steve the shark
NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, MT, and Beijing.
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Livingston, Montana!!!! Interesting. Militia central. Some very interesting people in that region. Maybe its just coincidence, but an office in place with a population of 7,000 people versus those other places with millions. No offense to Livingston. It is a nice place that I have been through often.
It’s worse than the growing urbania problem we thought it was.
Where’s the data on the 50 state average, or any other hard numbers?
Surfacestation.org has already outlined the siting issues and lack of proper coverage.
The US does not consist entirely of the concrete & asphalt jungle.
But most of the stations are located in it.
Minimum temperatures don’t measure night time temperatures, they measure early morning temperatures (which is when the daily minimum temperature generally occurs), and while warmer nights may be the cause of increased minimum temperatures, increased minimum temperatures could equally well be caused by increased early morning sunlight reaching the ground due to decreased near horizon haze and particulate pollution, which has certainly occurred in major urban centers over the last 30 years.
The take away points are,
The only way to determine if night time temperatures are increasing is to look at temperatures at fixed times (midnight, 4am), and this data doesn’t exist for more than a few places.
Highly paid climate professionals don’t seem to know that minimum temperatures don’t occur at night, which is symptomatic of the pervasive ignorance of the basics in the realm of the climate
I live in a rural area 8 miles from the nearest town (pop 3200) and drive 55 miles to the nearest large city (pop 200,000). Many mornings on the way to work, the temperature will increase as much as 10 degrees F (according to the temp display on my rearview mirror so not very reliable but close enough). This is all before the sun comes up, so not much can be attributed to direct solar.
John
Theo Goodwin said:
September 15, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Pardon me for being a broken record, but this startling new information would have been known long ago if meteorologists and climate scientists did not have the absolutely weird habit of recording a contrived temperature for each day and place. What they do is take the average of a daytime and a nighttime reading. Is that weird or what. Folks, we are scientists. Stick with the facts. Record an actual measured temperature for day and another actual measured temperature for night. Do not average them. Do not report an average. The average is worthless to science.
Amen. “Weird habit” is right. This practice makes absolutely no sense. But they then compound it by averaging the averages! The ability to compare these numbers in any statistically meaningful sense is lost. What really matters is heat content, which could be measured using an integrated set of recorded temperatures over time. I have never understood how a daily high (which, in a hypothetical example, might have only been the temperature for a brief period of time) can be averaged with a daily low (when the temperature over 24 hours could hypothetically have been at or near the low for much of that period of time) to generate any meaningful measure of the average temperature for the day. This penchant to produce averages is very peculiar.
Is even the opening statement correct? “While it is common knowledge that the summer of 2010 posted record-high temperatures across the United States….” Where? My impression was that while this past summer had its hot moments in the South and East, overall it was relatively moderate. Parts of the west coast felt they had missed summer altogether due to the body of cold Arctic water lurking just off the coast.
Claude Harvey
Moratorium cities.
savethesharks says:
September 15, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I’d have to agree with you. While I admire the NDRC’s work on overfishing, I’d never give them a dime, for all the reasons you state. It’s a shame that all environmental organizations just won’t let go of their political, ecototalitarian agendas. They still have the good-will of the sheeple, and could do so much good if they focussed on real problems and practical, non-punitive solutions.