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.
=========================================================
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.
More publicity for Penn & Livingston is here:
Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study
September 15, 2010 by Lin Edwards
http://www.physorg.com/news203746768.html
The comments at physorg are hilarious.
The Arizona Daily Star carried a story about the summer’s heat in Arizona titled;
Summer was extra hot here; blame the nighttime temps
Some excerpt;
The lead sentence in the closing paragraph…
In response to question about trends this was offered..
What really strikes me is that what is cited is regional warming in an area quite susceptible to the ENSO and other natural events. But…. not a word of those realities. Misinformation or propaganda?….. let the reader be the judge.
Here is a link to the complete article..
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_976f6920-74b4-5241-8a51-b40e1e605d44.html
To our friends in Oz- we here in NW USA are looking at that White Witch of a La Nina
and thinking-those who have lived through that time period of-the 50’s 60’s and70’s
we are are going there again….
I’d like to see a green Australia.
The NRDC is truly a disinformation organ, I trust nothing they say. UHE is real. But that” greenfields” effect is too..
“ETHICIST” Donald Brown of Penn State is a huge warmist, and he replied to me thusly when I questioned the occurence of CAGW.
“-Even though one should be suspicious of climate models, they are now working to predict what we are seeing and can be used to explain prior temperatures the Earth has experienced.
-2010 is the hottest year so far and the last decade is the hottest on record.
-Number of record highs is 2x record lows
-Growing seasons are lengthening
-Nights have warmed more than days (this is very important to rule out the sun as the cause of the warming.
-Oceans have warmed steadily since 1970 and more importantly they are warming in a way that makes recent global warming very likely not attributable to ocean cycles.
-More wildfires are being seen around the world
-Droughts and floods are increasing in intensity and frequency
-Storm damage is rising as predicted.
-Snows are melting earlier
-Fire seasons start earlier and are harder to contain
-The world is loosing snow cover
-The globe is losing frozen ground . permafrost.
-World’s glaciers are loosing ice each year
-Sea ice is declining
-Volume of sea ice is declining
-Greenland is loosing ice
-Antarctica is loosing ice
-Sea level is rising at the fastest level on record
-Oceans are becoming more acid
-Plant and animals are moving up slope and north 3.0 miles/decade
-Timing of flowers, butterflies emergencies are appearing earlier, ”
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2010/08/the-worst-ethical-scandal-in-the-us-congress-climate-change.html
Note the 4th item on his list of long since debunked proofs.
Thing s the higher nighttime teems are showing up in rural data, too. I downloaded 10 years of university of mo data last winter, and I found that for most locations high temperatures were Actually falling, whilenlow temperatures were higher, driving the averages slightly up. I really think that more cloud cover and higher humidities go a long way to explain this, but, that doesn’t make for scary enough headlines.
can’t recall this on WUWT. nearly 500 comments. some interesting bits, some anti-population stuff:
7 Sept: Marketwatch: Paul B. Farrell: Forget going green — Earth doesn’t care
Commentary: Hybrids, recycling, solar won’t halt species extinction
Cover story: “The Earth Doesn’t Care If You Drive a Hybrid!” Or recycle. Or eat organic food. Or live in a green house powered by solar energy. Or squander commodities. The Earth just doesn’t care how much you waste.
Was that a cover story in Mother Earth News? Or The Onion? No folks, it was the cover story in the elite American Scholar Journal by Nobel physicist Robert B. Laughlin of Stanford University. I bring it to your attention because in today’s resurgence of Know-Nothing party politics few care what scholars say about
anything …
“Nobody knows why these dramatic climate changes occurred in the ancient past. … One thing we know for sure is that people weren’t involved. There weren’t enough people around during the ice episodes to matter, and there weren’t any people around before the ice episodes.” So can we do anything to stop the “sixth species extinction?” No.
Climate change “is a matter of geologic time, something that the Earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself,” warns Laughlin. Earth “doesn’t include the potentially catastrophic effects on civilization in its planning. Far from being responsible for damaging the earth’s climate, civilization might not be able to forestall any of these terrible changes once the earth has decided to make them … climate ought not to concern us too much … because it’s beyond our power to control.” …
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/forget-going-green-earth-doesnt-care-2010-09-07
-Storm damage is rising as predicted. ( because of higher population density in storm damaged areas)
-The world is loosing snow cover (every summer, same old thing)
-The globe is losing frozen ground . permafrost.(darn those pipelines)
-World’s glaciers are loosing ice each year( but the owning countries told the IPCC to shove off)
-Sea ice is declining(and inclining depending on what hemisphere is freaked out over)
-Greenland is loosing ice(just not as fast as it is gaining it)
-Antarctica is loosing ice(that flows out to the sea in glacial advance)
-Sea level is rising at the fastest level on record(faster than a speeding snail)
-Oceans are becoming more acid(limestone cowboys)
-Plant and animals are moving up slope and north 3.0 miles/decade(and the ones that did are pouring back down the slopes for dear heat as winter nips thier heels)
Nice list.
“”Baa Humbug says:
September 15, 2010 at 6:47 pm
I’d like to see a comparison between urban and rural t data.
Also, what about cloud cover over these areas?””
This is a little deeper (but better) than merely rural vs urban temperatures for it shows the graphs of Dr. Spencer’s analysis using some 10,000 weather stations world-wide vs population density at each station as a proxy for the UHI effect. To me this is one of his very best articles to date and I hope he carries it to publish a paper.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/10/spencer-global-urban-heat-island-effect-study-an-update/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/04/spencers-uhi-vs-population-project-an-update/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/03/spencer-using-hourly-surface-dat-to-gauge-uhi-by-population-density/
From these do you also get the impression that with no population there is little to zero trend in temperatures? This was a really great analysis to me, the way true physicists do proper science.
Remember the Alar scare? Something farmers put on apples that was not a pesticide but improved crop size. NRDC got hold of some junk science that said Alar gave children cancer. They got the story in Oct. Instead of immediately alerting the public to the danger, they sat on the story until the next spring. Why? So they could hire a PR firm to put together an effective fund drive and to get some Hollywood actress to front an advocacy group for Alar free apples. Then they rolled out their campaign. After stressing out the mothers of America and doing serious damage to the apple growers, it was revealed that real science proved that to get sick from Alar on apples would require eating a pickup truck load of apples a day for months. No apology from NRDC is on record.
If you can find a copy of Aaron Wildavsky’s “But Is It True”, you can find out how many of these scare stories are junk science. Meanwhile, the deleterious effects of a continous barrage of stressful media scare stories on human beings is well established, even, one might say, robust, and worse than we think. Environmentalists lie!
All the Natural Resources Defense Council has to defend is the epidemic of lunacy among it’s staff.
The urban heat island of NYC is clear from a comparison with NY State. The August temeprature has a zero trend for the state over the last 80 years, but it’s 0.26 degrees per decade for NYC. See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/NewYorkAugustTemperature.htm
Remember these wise words by the great Dr. Miskolczi’s discovery:
“This discovery is proof that the IPCC has been lying to the world, along with the CRU and other agencies which have been pushing for programs such as Carbon Cap and Trade schemes. That scheme was designed to coerce peoples and governments into handing over tax dollars for the UN to manage and redistribute as it sees fit. Carbon Dioxide emissions cannot cause Global Warming. Government agencies, including the U.S. federal government and the White House, continue to push this issue as a prelude to instituting a Cap and Trade Tax scheme here in the United States, and it is based upon fraudulent science.”
Robert
“Because of this effect, it’s likely that the ‘warming’ going on is not CO2 related, or if it is related to CO2, there is much stronger case for it being the concrete/asphalt that has caused a lot of the manmade warming”
while the land record may be effected by this, dont forget that 70% of the record is SST.
And dont forget the trend we see in UHA and RSS.
concrete may play a role. but not in SST and not in UHA or RSS.
During the day, the summer solar flux can easily reach 1000 W.m-2. Some of this heat flux gets absorbed and stored by the urban infrastructure to be released after the sun sets. The increase in downward ‘clear sky’ LWIR flux from a 100 ppm increase in CO2 is 1.7 W.m-2. The means that the maximum total daily dose of flux from 100 ppm of CO2 is 0.15 MJ.m-2. This is equivalent to 2.5 minutes of summer sunshine per day, or the daily evaporation of a film of water 65 microns thick x 1 m^2. One small cloud in front of the sun for 2.5 minutes or 0.065 mm of rain per day can ruin all of the IPCC’s global warming predictions. Urban heating is controlled by land use, moisture and sunlight. No CO2 is involved. That radiative forcing constant of 1.7 W.m-2 can only warm the greenhouseland inside the IPCC models. No reality is required, just a little fraudulent math and a hockey stick.
CO2, is there anything it can’t do?
You don’t even need to compare day to night, just drive or walk. When you drive by a grassy area, it’s significantly cooler than when you drive by a parking lot.
I feel this every day while I drive through the city on my way home from work, even though I’m on the highway most of the way. In the part of town I work in, there are lots of trees and grassy areas and the air, even on the highway, is fairly cool. But as I drive through the heart of downtown, it heats up considerably.
It would really be nice if these reports used a little common sense.
An opportunity to get to the decision-makers…
FASTS and APESMA are working together to advocate and promoting the issues of science and scientists to the government, key stakeholders and the public. We have the ear of the government and we want to make sure we use it to best reflect what our members – you – think.
The survey seeks your feedback on the big issues we all face, the professional issues you face and what you think the priorities we should be pursing to improve the position of science and scientists in Australia.
A range of organisations will be involved. This is a rare and important opportunity for the profession and a chance to have your say. We strongly encourage you to participate.
The survey will take around 15 minutes to complete and is only open until 24th September (even though the covering page says 16 September). There is a meeting to discuss early results on Monday, so please complete the survey by Friday, 17 September at 12 noon if possible.
If you complete the survey you will go into the draw to win a free ticket to attend FASTS annual flagship event Science meets Parliament in Canberra, which brings together some 200 scientists from around Australia to meet with federal parliamentarians and learn about the political process and how your work is important to it.
Click the link below to get started:
http://FAST-SURVEY-2010-Members.questionpro.com
This is supposed to be news? The Romans knew of the effects of building on the temperature of a city 2000 years ago, and after Nero destroyed the city with fire rebuilt Rome to mitigate the effect.
In my view we ought to acknowledge that humans do impact on micro climates but through UHI not CO2. UHI can impact as much as 5 or 6 degrees, Co2 has yet to be proven as affecting temperature yet we concentrate on the latter-over which we can do little-and ignore the former-over which we can have an influence through intelligent design.
tonyb
Isn’t this the Urban Heat Island effect?
The fascination for averaging data puzzles me too, particularly when so many supposedly well-educated people don’t understand the concept of average, an artificial contsruct that in itself has very limited use in the practical world. It is helpful in making comparisons, providing apples are compared with apples, but data from measuring any phenomenon loses much when manipulated – a daily graph of noon temps, for example, gives a very clear picture of weather for that month, particularly if one also graphs the daily rainfall and windflow. Comparing monthly peaks and troughs year by year seem much more informative to me than creating a picture that does not reflect reality.
Here in the UK, politicians berate schools and teachers for not doing a decent job because around half of the school population acheives at a below-average level. This failure to understand the concept of average suggests that educational failure in math and in logic goes way further back in time than the present day.
And we wonder why politicians at all levels have such a slender grasp of the complexities of climate!
“I’d say the entire USA is one giant UHI.”
Have you flown over the USA and looked down whilst doing so? Most of it is empty. It is a shame that most of the thermometers are located in the small hot areas where humans live.
“-Sea level is rising at the fastest level on record”
I just covered my monitor in coffee at that one. What record is this person referring to? At the end of the last ice age sea-levels rose much further and much faster than they are doing now.
Additionally, sea-levels rose faster during the first half of the 20th century than the second half.
John Marshall: Exactly, termed the UHI effect.
With all the concrete and asphalt in cities holding heat why hasn’t there been almost zero development of the Stirling heat engine? Why has this almost 100 year old invention literally been snubbed by “greenies”?
Ian Mc Vindicated said:
September 15, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I’ll never forget a trip I made to Los Angeles about 15 years ago as a tourist. We were driving around downtown L.A. ( where the tall buildings are ) and it was boiling, around 94 F. We had a brand new Mustang convertible as a rent-a-car. It was so hot we decided to head for Venice Beach, another tourist hot spot. Well……..as we left downtown, the temperature dropped , so much so that we ended up pulling over and putting the roof up, and when we got to the beach, it was about 68 F. We went to the beach like idiots and found a hollow in the sand and laid on the towels and wondered why no one else was there too…….( too cold ) . However it did highlight to me the effects of (1) how the ocean as it cooled the beach and (2) the immense effect of an urban heat island. It was quite a reversal of extremes.
The difference in temperature in LA between beach and an inland area like downtown is due far more to the (1) effect of the cold ocean on shore areas rather than (2) the heat island effect. That said, it would be interesting to know if the coastal fog there has been migrating towards the coast as a result either of overall warming or of increased urban density downtown.