We’ve already told you that the Russian heatwave had everything to do with weather, and not climate. NOAA agrees:
NOAA on the Russian heat wave: blocking high, not global warming
At least NASA Goddard agrees with this, sort of. – Anthony
An unparalleled heat wave in eastern Europe, coupled with intense droughts and fires around Moscow, put Earth’s temperatures in the headlines this summer. Likewise, a string of exceptionally warm days in July in the eastern United States strained power grids, forced nursing home evacuations, and slowed transit systems. Both high-profile events reinvigorated questions about humanity’s role in climate change.
But, from a global perspective, how warm was the summer exactly? How did the summer’s temperatures compare with previous years? And was global warming the “cause” of the unusual heat waves? Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led by GISS’s director, James Hansen, have analyzed summer temperatures and released an update on the GISS website that addresses all of these questions.
This map, based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows temperature anomalies for the Russian Federation from July 20–27, 2010, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2000 to 2008. For more information about this image, please visit NASA’s Earth Observatory. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Earth Observatory
Globally, June through August, according to the GISS analysis, was the fourth-warmest summer period in GISS’s 131-year-temperature record. The same months during 2009, in contrast, were the second warmest on record. The slightly cooler 2010 summer temperatures were primarily the result of a moderate La Niña (cooler than normal temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean) replacing a moderate El Niño (warmer than normal temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean).
As part of their analysis, Hansen and colleagues released a series of graphs that help explain why perceptions of global temperatures vary — often erroneously — from season to season and year to year. For example, unusually warm summer temperatures in the United States and eastern Europe created the impression of global warming run amuck in those regions this summer, while last winter’s unusually cool temperatures created the opposite impression. A more global view, as shown below for 2009 and 2010, makes clear that extrapolating global trends based on the experience of one or two regions can be misleading.
The four graphs show seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the most recent two summers and winters; that is, they show how temperatures during the various seasons differ from the mean temperatures from 1951-1980, which serves as a reference period. Unusually warm summers in eastern Europe and much of the United States created the impression of record global temperatures this summer (lower right), while unseasonably cool winters in the same regions had the opposite effect during winter of 2010 (lower left). For more information about this image, please visit the GISS website. Credit: NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Hansen
“Unfortunately, it is common for the public to take the most recent local seasonal temperature anomaly as indicative of long-term climate trends,” Hansen notes. “[We hope] these global temperature anomaly maps may help people understand that the temperature anomaly in one place in one season has limited relevance to global trends.”
Last winter, for example, unusually cool temperatures in much of the United States caused many Americans to wonder why temperatures seemed to be plummeting, and whether the Earth could actually be experiencing global warming in the face of such frigid temperatures. A more global view, seen in the lower left of the four graphs above, shows that global warming trends had hardly abated. In fact, despite the cool temperatures in the United States, last winter was the second-warmest on record.
Though calendar year 2010 may or may not turn out to be the warmest on record, the warmest 12-month period in the GISS analysis was reached in mid-2010. The lower portion of the graph shows when major volcanic eruptions have occurred with green triangles. The lowest part shows El Niño (red) and La Niña (blue) trends. For more information about this graph, please visit the GISS website Credit: NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Hansen
This map shows temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 for the summer of 2010; that is, how temperatures in June through August 2010 differed from the mean temperatures from 1951-1980. A NASA visualizer created it based on data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. For more information about this image, visit the Earth Observatory site. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Earth Observatory
Meanwhile, the global seasonal temperatures for the spring of 2010 — March, April, and May — was the warmest on GISS’s record. Does that mean that 2010 will shape up to be the warmest on record? Since the warmest year on GISS’s record — 2005 — experienced especially high temperatures during the last four calendar months of the year, it’s not yet clear how 2010 will stack up.
“It is likely that the 2005 or 2010 calendar year means will turn out to be sufficiently close that it will be difficult to say which year was warmer, and results of our analysis may differ from those of other groups,” Hansen notes. “What is clear, though, is that the warmest 12-month period in the GISS analysis was reached in mid-2010.”
The Russian heat wave was highly unusual. Its intensity exceeded anything scientists have seen in the temperature record since widespread global temperature measurements became available in the 1880s. Indeed, a leading Russian meteorologist asserted that the country had not experienced such an intense heat wave in the last 1,000 years. And a prominent meteorologist with Weather Underground estimated such an event may occur as infrequently as once every 15,000 years.
In the face of such a rare event, there’s much debate and discussion about whether global warming can “cause” such extreme weather events. The answer — both no and yes — is not a simple one.
Weather in a given region occurs in such a complex and unstable environment, driven by such a multitude of factors, that no single weather event can be pinned solely on climate change. In that sense, it’s correct to say that the Moscow heat wave was not caused by climate change.
However, if one frames the question slightly differently: “Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. “Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
For GISS’s full analysis, please visit:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Amino Acids in Meteorites: There is little difference between GISS and the other two surface-based datasets between 60S and 60N. The graph is from an upcoming post (I’m still writing part 2):
http://i52.tinypic.com/o72d76.jpg
And if you average the NCDC and GISS data and average the two TLT datasets, and then scale the TLT data…
http://i52.tinypic.com/30rxydy.jpg
…the surface data diverges after the 1997/98 El Nino, indicating the surface data and TLT data have different ENSO aftereffects. And that’s the subject of the upcoming post.
Second warmist, fourth warmest, ninth warmest in 130 years at an anomalous 0.6C. Doesn’t anyone get the joke? Presumably they have these ranking from the depths of the little ice age in the 17th-18th Century so why not say for over 300 years? The trouble with this type of unscientific nonesense is if the temps were to continue to fall globally (annual basis) as they have for the past decade for the next decade, they could still say the 12th warmest, the fourteenth warmist, the nineteenth warmest in 330 years.
John Kehr: “This year’s climate was classic warm phase Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.”
I’m always perplexed by warm phase versus cold phase of the AMO with respect to global temperatures. Doesn’t the fact that the North Atlantic SST anomalies dropped faster than global temperatures from 1945 to 1975 and rose faster than global temperature anomalies from 1975 to 2005, for example, actually determine the contribution of the AMO?
Gary Pearse says:
October 2, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Given the sea surface temps progression to colder, the Arctic freezing up very fast, the table appears to be set for a really bad one for the NH. Nature, being fickle, will send that stuff wherever it pleases. Just be glad the the Arctic is nowhere near as cold as the Antarctic. Poor S. America really got hammered this last winter.
RE: Connor @ur momisugly 5:41
I once got on a horse that got all angry and belligerent like you. She had a burr under the saddle pad and having removed that she became a very functional animal. So, check for burrs and see if that doesn’t help.
This is in reply to enneagram. Before you go on about formal and common ideology get your fact’s straight. The beatles did not write ” Imagine ” john lennon did and he wrote it in the 70’s. Ok now you can talk.
Here’s a link that contains a comment (following it) that documents earlier Russian heat waves.
Here are some other recent WUWT threads on the Russian heat wave. Somewhere in them are additional comments like the one above:
Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010summer/
Now GISS is not only second-guessing the climate but what the public thinks too. And this is a government agency of scientists? Look how they twist the words, ‘appropriate’, their appropiate, ‘probably’, and ‘almost’. Now you know for sure this is not from real scientists.
Jack Edwards – you said
QUOTE
While weather isn’t climate – sometimes it surely seems that something odd is going on. I can understand how someone living where I do when blame the summer on GW
UNQUOTE
Please do NOT worry.
When I was a boy long ago, the climate was crook too.
I can’t remember if it was too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry.
But it was very worring and we all blamed it all on THE BOMB.
Or more correcly on atomic bomb testing in the Pacific.
But whatever the problem – it eventually ended.
The weather just resumed its old habit of being too hot, cold, wet AND dry.
So we forgot all about it.
Until that is the IPCC took up the good fight, or do I mean fright?
And we all became so worried about the CLIMATE CHANGE once again.
Relax it’s just climate in very small letters.
And the climate is always changing, as you’ll eventually know.
John F. Hultquist says:
October 2, 2010 at 7:24 pm
RE: Connor @ur momisugly 5:41
I once got on a horse that got all angry and belligerent like you. She had a burr under the saddle pad and having removed that she became a very functional animal. So, check for burrs and see if that doesn’t help.
======================
Well said! And repeated here for effect.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Roger Knights says:
October 2, 2010 at 7:34 pm
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
Here’s a link that contains a comment (following it) that documents earlier Russian heat waves.
============================
Wow. Thanks for repeating that. Material copied and saved.
Even a letter from Tchaicovsky describing the suffocating peat fires.
I live to the ENE of one of the largest peat bog swamps on the east coast of the USA.
In the summer of 2008, 1.7 million people were choked by Code Red and even Code Purple EPA quality air.
It was disgusting….and potentially “suffocating”.
But the same thing happened in the 1920s…..well before the “CO2 excuse” could be used.
Part of the cycle….of living downwind from so much slow-burning fuel.
Hansen, a publicly-funded official, is already on a noose when it comes to his reputation. How low will he go?
A scientist, he is not.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Shouldn’t GISS update their reference points? 1951-1980 is so last century; most/all but GISS should be using 1971-2000 by now.
How is it allowed for Hansen to make adjustments all by himself without revealing his formulations for others to see, yet at the same time he interprets his own homogenized data? Has the world never heard of this thing called conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict (which is often worse than a real conflict of interest).
It’s exactly like putting the fox in charge of security at the chicken coop!
Norm in Calgary says:
October 2, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Shouldn’t GISS update their reference points? 1951-1980 is so last century; most/all but GISS should be using 1971-2000 by now.
How is it allowed for Hansen to make adjustments all by himself without revealing his formulations for others to see, yet at the same time he interprets his own homogenized data? Has the world never heard of this thing called conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict (which is often worse than a real conflict of interest).
It’s exactly like putting the fox in charge of security at the chicken coop!
=========================
I hear ya and you are spot on.
But he [Hansen] can get away with it right now because his boss is _________.
Notice he only let loose his true colors until after our current administration was elected in power.
Every since then, he has had free reign: Coal protests abroad, bad GISS Arctic data at home and abroad…arrests….same thing.
A scientist he is not. And a taxpayer-funded public servant he is not.
He should be tried.
-Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
High temperatures around Moscow were caused by the blocking anticyclone and enhanced by forest and peat bogs fires during that time. Why the area outside the forest fires cooled down?
Can’t they use their brains? Have they one?
Wow,
I like previous comment from savethesharks. very much on point.
I had initially planned to address the following comments and will do by reference
Robert says:
October 2, 2010 at 1:37 pm
rbateman,
Yeah and no one would know what that period felt like… the reason the anomaly period is 1950-1980 is cause that’s when the majority of baby boomers grew up..
——
Excuse me, is that how a scientifically based anomaly period is chosen? What baby boomers? And how do you know they grew up? Tell us why that is a scientifically discernable period to base your prejudice upon? Please share your credentials, they look exceptionally weak from here. Power on – I suppose.
Last week, my neighbors’ two goats found a way into their vegetable garden and, predictably, devoured all cabbages.
Letting Dr. Hansen analyze global temperatures is akin to inviting your goats into your kitchen garden.
Set the wolf to guard the sheep!
I must correct my comment. I asked James Hansen about the 1951 to 1980 base period
for anomalies. He says that it has always been that. All the 1961 to 1990 base periods that
I could find do not come from GISS. Sorry to question Dr. Hansen on that issue. He says it
doesn’t affect the temperature change, only the zero point. But I would think it would give
the impression of greater warming than would the warmer base.
Two comments
1. Take away the temporary El Nino effect and you have little or no temperature anomaly in the first half of this year.
2. De-manipulate and de-strangle the historic GISS temperature data, plus make proper allowance for recent UHI, and there is probably little or no temperature anomaly.
If you have ever lived through a period of extreme weather in some part of the world – I have several times – the one thing you can rely on is a concensus of opinion that severe climate change is happening.
Hansen MUST be made to resign from his position, right along with ALL of his sycophant cronies at GISS.
Until then, the initials ‘GISS’ shall come to mean ‘Government Instituted Sully Science.
The frequency of extreme warm anomalies increases disproportionately as global temperature rises. “Were global temperature not increasing, the chance of an extreme heat wave such as the one Moscow experienced, though not impossible, would be small,” Hansen says.
With temperatures or anything else, assuming a normal distribution whose standard deviation does not increase as the mean increases, it’s certainly true that the frequency of events greater than the mean increases disproportionately as the mean increases. (This is because a constant-width vertical strip of the area under the curve has a greater area as it is nearer the center.) But this is very general. It does not tell us by how much the frequency of events like the Russian heat wave should increase with a given increase of the global temperature, not even roughly. In fact, it does not even tell us that that the increase of frequency occurs; for all we know, the shape of the distribution changes; that’s an empirical question. So the statement is nothing more than a math lesson, for lack of a better term.
Maybe I should have said “…whose standard deviation does not decrease…”
In mid 200x, people were quick to talk about last year being the hottest on record. In late 200x years while global temps were dropping, they were quick to talk about the previous 10 years being the hottest on record (and then decade). Now they’re talking about the first 8 or 9 months being the hottest on record or the previous 12 months.
I’m really getting tired of that and may start lashing out at reporters who promulgate such cherry picking. Haven’t figure out what to do about the scientists. I know Hansen won’t listen, but there might be hope for others.
“Unfortunately, it is common for the public to take the most recent local seasonal temperature anomaly as indicative of long-term climate trends,” Hansen notes. “[We hope] these global temperature anomaly maps may help people understand that the temperature anomaly in one place in one season has limited relevance to global trends.”
Right, a local seasonal anomaly cannot really be taken as indicative of long-term climate trends = as evidence for “climate change” due to CO2, except when at the same time it can also be taken as evidence for “climate change” due to CO2:
“Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels,” the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: “Almost certainly not.”
You simply have not lived long enough yet to experience the normal swings in weather. It takes far longer than a mere 15 years of experience to witness anything close to the typical variations in weather in any given locale. In Los Angeles County I did not use the air conditioner for most months of the year. Only in months like July-September was it necessary to use the air conditionaer…until about 1978-79. Year after year the heat made it necessary to use the air conditioner earlier and later through the year. By 1995 it was necessary to use the air conditioner 11 months of the year, instead of the previous 1.5 to 3 months per year. In 1978, I wore a heavy jacket in December through February. By the late 1980s, the jackets stayed in the closet unused throughout the winter. Now, in the years of 2009-2010, the jackets have come out of the closet, and the air conditioner is no longer being used 11 months of the year. Conditions are returning to what we were experiencing more than thirty years ago.
We are witnessing these same kinds of changes in many other locales besides Los Angeles. We come from the Midwest where you need the heat and humidity to grow good tomatoes; and we have lived and traveled extensively in other locales ranging from the Appalachians to the Pacific Northwest and far beyond, experiencing their weather trends over many years. Assignments in meteorology have also provided a unique perspective from which techniques and methods of meteorology were observed and experienced.
When Hansen and his ilk loudly proclaimed a year as the hottest year ever in the Midwest and listeners echoed those claims, I could only laugh at the lot of them. In June 1967 we cut, baled, and put up hay in the barn during a not unprecedented heat wave. The temperature in the shade next to the hay field was about 105F-110F. The temperature underneath the barn’s steel roofing was 135F on the thermometer tacked onto the post where we worked. On Christmas Day about 1962 we played baseball in the afernoon in our short sleeve shirts a short distance from St. Louis, Missouri, because it was too hot to wear a jacket. The next Christmas was a very cold and miserable day.
You do not know what it is to be hot in Alabama, Arkansas, or Georgia unless you experienced the Summers of 1934 and 1935. There is a reason why folks living in proximity to the Mason-Dixon line called them the Dog Days of August in 1935 and again during the the cooler period of 1966. Live long enough and pay close attention to the weather, then you’ll see what real variations in weather are like.
When the PDO / AMO flip from hot to cold, there is a huge excess of heat built up in the oceans and the air over the poles starts to cool dramatically. For a few years we get to live in “Lava Lamp World” as large blobs of heat leave the equatorial oceans and head for the poles. At the same time large blobs of cold leave the poles and head back to the equator.
The net result is simultaneous blobs of red and blue on the maps depending on what blob is over your head.
This isn’t ‘global warming’. Rather it’s “long time lag global heat loss” as we watch a 60 year cycle with 18 year time lags work off the hot phase of the oceans and move to a cold phase.
At it’s core, it is a simple confusion of temperature for heat.