People send me stuff. Strange, what could be so wrong or threatening about this story headline that it simply had to “vanish” without so much as a correction or a note as to why? Fortunately the Internet has a memory. This screencap below is from Google cache:
But if you go to Paul Hudson’s BBC blog right now…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
or to the original URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/12/coldest-december-day-on-record.shtml
You won’t find this headline. Instead, you’ll find this one:
Note the post time of 17:14 matches on the two stories, suggesting this has been a headline rewrite. Though, the article says:
So its been the equal coldest December day in the Vale of York since records began in 1932.
and
Scampton in Lincolnshire has experienced its coldest December day on record with minus 5.5C. Records here go back to the early 1950’s.
So, with those sentences, the headline would still be valid.
The story headline still exists in Google search findings, which is how I located the cached copy.
Note the headline was originally on the BBC home page according to the top link. I guess somebody didn’t like the original headline and decided it must be changed. h/t to WUWT reader “Pingo” for noticing.
On a related note, have a look at this headline right below the newly revised BBC story:
Ummm, sadly no. A “dead heat” is defined as:
dead heat
a race in which two or more contestants reach the finish line at exactly the same time; tie
The problem is that we have not yet reached “the finish line” for 2010, and compared to 1998, 2010 certainly doesn’t look like a “tie” to me. Here’s Dr. Roy Spencer’s UAH plot with some lines in purple I added comparing peaks of 1998 and 2010, and comparing the 13 month running average peaks of 1998 and 2010 in red:
Clearly, the peak temperatures between 1998 and 2010 are significantly different as shown by the gap in the two magenta lines.
But, what Mr. Hudson is focusing on with his “dead heat” statement is the red 13 month running average line, which “could” be said to be in a tie with 1998 at this moment. There’s only one problem, which becomes clear when we magnify Dr. Spencer’s UAH graph:
As indicated by my red arrow in the magnified view above, the 13 month running average stops in June, 2010, and the months of July, August, September, October, and November apparently aren’t included in it.
If they were, the red plot line would extend to the end of the graph. What’s comical about all this is that the 13 month running average was added by Dr. Spencer in response to complaints that the 25 month running average he had been using “hid the increase”. Read his explanation here: Is Spencer Hiding the Increase? We Report, You Decide
Since the temperature continue to drop, when we do finally get the completed 13 month running average for 2010 that includes all temperatures for 2010, Mr. Hudson will discover that red peak in 2010 will have dropped, and is nowhere close to a “dead heat” when the finish line is actually reached.
But since everyone wants to “close out 2010 early”, so as to help those partiers down in Cancun reach some sort of consensus and action, such stories claiming 2010 will be equal to or warmer than 1998, or the “hottest year on record” or in the “top three hottest years on record” seem to be the overreaching norm for media these days.
Since BBC is interested in correcting headlines, I’m sure our UK readers will want to point out this error to the BBC so that they can change it right away.
Place your bets now.
For those that might want to run their own plots to compare, here’s the actual UAH data for 1998:
ANNUAL CYCLE BASED ON 79001-98365 12-MON RUNNING MEAN YEAR MON GLOBAL NH SH TRPC NO.DAYS GLOBAL NH SH TRPC DAYS 1998 1 0.582 0.612 0.552 1.097 31. 0.103 0.149 0.056 0.213 365. 1998 2 0.753 0.857 0.649 1.291 28. 0.160 0.211 0.109 0.330 365. 1998 3 0.528 0.655 0.401 1.025 31. 0.207 0.263 0.152 0.442 365. 1998 4 0.770 1.014 0.525 1.059 30. 0.287 0.358 0.217 0.563 365. 1998 5 0.645 0.685 0.606 0.885 31. 0.347 0.419 0.274 0.653 365. 1998 6 0.562 0.635 0.490 0.536 30. 0.394 0.469 0.318 0.702 365. 1998 7 0.510 0.659 0.362 0.442 31. 0.430 0.511 0.348 0.706 365. 1998 8 0.518 0.544 0.492 0.447 31. 0.465 0.539 0.392 0.715 365. 1998 9 0.458 0.571 0.345 0.312 30. 0.495 0.563 0.427 0.708 365. 1998 10 0.416 0.519 0.312 0.339 31. 0.519 0.592 0.445 0.711 365. 1998 11 0.192 0.272 0.113 0.130 30. 0.519 0.606 0.431 0.688 365. 1998 12 0.277 0.416 0.138 0.073 31. 0.516 0.618 0.414 0.632 365.
and 2010:
ANNUAL CYCLE BASED ON 79001-98365 12-MON RUNNING MEAN YEAR MON GLOBAL NH SH TRPC NO.DAYS GLOBAL NH SH TRPC DAYS 2010 1 0.648 0.860 0.436 0.681 31. 0.313 0.363 0.263 0.286 365. 2010 2 0.603 0.720 0.486 0.791 28. 0.340 0.375 0.306 0.351 365. 2010 3 0.653 0.850 0.455 0.726 31. 0.380 0.419 0.340 0.426 365. 2010 4 0.501 0.799 0.203 0.633 30. 0.408 0.459 0.356 0.477 365. 2010 5 0.534 0.775 0.292 0.708 31. 0.441 0.511 0.371 0.542 365. 2010 6 0.436 0.550 0.323 0.476 30. 0.473 0.558 0.389 0.573 365. 2010 7 0.489 0.635 0.342 0.420 31. 0.479 0.596 0.361 0.565 365. 2010 8 0.511 0.674 0.347 0.364 31. 0.501 0.633 0.369 0.562 365. 2010 9 0.603 0.555 0.650 0.285 30. 0.509 0.630 0.389 0.536 365. 2010 10 0.419 0.365 0.473 0.152 31. 0.514 0.633 0.396 0.517 365.
Source: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.3
Update: Dr. Roy Spencer uses the term “dead heat” in the posting here.
Nov. 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.38 deg. C
Which I’ll have to say, I didn’t read, since that day I was attending to my wife in the hospital. Charles the Moderator posted the story for me (on WUWT). So this is where Mr. Hudson got the term, and I’m in error in assuming it was his term.
My point about the year not being finished, and average line in 2010 dropping with time, and the comparison of absolute peaks remains valid though.
1998 1 0.582 0.612 0.552 1.096 31. 0.103 0.149 0.056 0.213 365. 1998 2 0.753 0.857 0.649 1.291 28. 0.160 0.211 0.109 0.330 365. 1998 3 0.528 0.655 0.401 1.025 31. 0.208 0.263 0.152 0.442 365. 1998 4 0.770 1.014 0.525 1.059 30. 0.288 0.358 0.218 0.563 365. 1998 5 0.645 0.685 0.606 0.885 31. 0.347 0.419 0.275 0.653 365. 1998 6 0.562 0.634 0.490 0.536 30. 0.394 0.469 0.319 0.702 365. 1998 7 0.510 0.659 0.362 0.442 31. 0.430 0.511 0.348 0.706 365. 1998 8 0.513 0.555 0.470 0.456 31. 0.465 0.540 0.390 0.715 365. 1998 9 0.432 0.564 0.300 0.284 30. 0.493 0.564 0.422 0.706 365. 1998 10 0.394 0.512 0.276 0.324 31. 0.514 0.592 0.437 0.708 365. 1998 11 0.190 0.265 0.116 0.134 30. 0.514 0.605 0.423 0.685 365. 1998 12 0.289 0.415 0.164 0.086 31. 0.512 0.617 0.408 0.631 365.
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ring ring ring….
PH: Hello, Hudson here.
PJ: Hello Paul….. Phil here.
PH: Oh! Hi Phil, to what do I owe this pleasant surprise?
PJ: Um, It’s about the, um, current headline on your blog.
PH: Oh yes, I assume you are talking about the Monday record, amazing, no?
PJ: Not so much…
PH: Huh? What do you mean?
PJ: It doesn’t look good….. can you dial it back a bit?
PH: Dial it back? What do you mean?
PJ: You know. Tone down the hyperbole a notch or two. Try a little less sensationalism.
PH: Wha… What on earth are you talking about? It’s a record for gosh sakes, it real…..
PJ: Paul, Paul calm down now…. you like your job, am I right?
CRU, UAH and RSS will have 1998 slightly warmer than 2010, GISS will have 2010 as the warmest ever.
What will the media do? Easy to answer.
Why is GISS different? Easy to answer.
Dec 06, 2010
Britain is Freezing to Death; Mounting Death Toll in Europe; NYT Changes Headlines to “Extremes”
Tracey Boles and Lucy Johnston
Comment by Icecap.us:
“This makes the likes of Blair, Brown, Holdren, Pachauri and his UN pirates, the enviros, the opportunists in the corporations and empty headed Hollywood ‘stars’ and Washington DC elitist politicans, and all the other wacky warmers and their enablers and cheerleaders in the lamestream media and alarmist blogs MASS MURDERERS. You see the world is awash in energy sources but the enviros and politicans are blocking access and want to push the useless alternative energy schemes which forces up the cost of energy which in the recession with high joblessness increases the number of families in energy poverty”.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
Must read:
UK power producers under estimate energy needs related to temperature.
Most negative scenario is under estimated.
In clear English this means: THEY ARE NOT PREPARED FOR THIS KIND OF PEAK DEMAND. No wonder they have one black out after the other and a rising crowd of angry customers.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-estimation.html
UAH shows that temperature went up slightly at the end of 1998. It looks like temps are heading down at the end of this year.
enlargement of end of 1998:
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2496/uahlt1979thrunov10cropz.gif
area from pink rectangle in graph:
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5112/uahlt1979thrunov10.gif
When all the math is done at the end of the year 2010 should end up slightly cooler than 1998. What global warmers are overlooking is that even if 2010 ends up tied with 1998 that still means global warming is not happening. There’s still temperature flattening happening in that case.
Alexej Buergin says:
December 6, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Why is GISS different? Easy to answer.
Yes, GISS is different.Graphs to prove it:
part 1
Yes, GISS is different.Graphs to prove it:
part 1
Yes, GISS is different. Graphs to prove it:
part 2
The very nature of a single global average will obscure the most important details of weather related changes that have direct and large impacts on regional life. We argue about how green or brown the overall forest color is yet fail to notice that only certain types of trees are changing color.
crosspatch says:
December 6, 2010 at 3:01 pm
The profiles for 1998 and 2010 are different. 1998 was a steeper peek and quick fall off while 2010 has been a more gradual rise. It was not as warm but was warm for a longer period of time.
Not sure about this. It seems to me 1998 was warmer than 2010 in 6 months out of 12. (I am assuming 2010 beats 1998 in December. If not 1998 will have been warmer for longer as well as having higher peaks).
Am I the only one to notice that he SAYS the Met Office rang him up and rang his chimes?
“Thanks to the Met Office Observer at Dishforth for clarifying this with me this evening.”
Got the call. Was told to splice them all together rather than use each instrumental record alone, and disappear the Inconvenient Records….
It’s the SPLICE that is essential to AGW data manipulation. At all times, beware the SPLICE. It’s everywhere…
Anthony wrote in the post:
Careful there – The 13 month average actually went up a smidgen. The Nov 2010 anomaly, .38, was added to the average; the Oct 2009 anomaly, .362 was removed.
The net result was the average rose ever-so-slightly from 0.503 0.504. The next month will retire a 0.498 anomaly so as long as December’s anomaly is less than that, then the average will drop. If things stay at 0.038 for a while, we’d see:
Month Anomaly 13 mo avg 10 0.362 12 mo avg 11 0.498 12 0.284 1 0.648 2 0.603 3 0.653 4 0.501 5 0.534 6 0.436 7 0.489 8 0.511 9 0.603 0.510 10 0.419 0.503 0.515 11 0.38 0.504 0.505 12 0.38 0.495 0.513 1 0.38 0.503 0.491 2 0.38 0.482 0.472 3 0.38 0.465 0.449 4 0.38 0.444 0.439(The average columns are the month on the line and the 12 or 11 before it.)
January’s 13 month average and December’s 12 month average would go up from the previous month, but then we’ll be retiring temperatures from the peak of the El Niño, and things will fall even if the global anomaly climbs a bit.
Presumably people will be doing a 12 month average to report the 2010 average, and December will have to be 0.10°C cooler than November to keep the 12 month average from climbing.
Are they averaging anomalies?
Kev-in-UK:
The BBC is a sham and should be ignored! – objective reporting on climate has never been one of their strengths –…
Unfortunately true and not restricted to climate. I began to lose trust when coverage of one of our presidential campaigns referred to Molly Ivans as a ‘presidential historian.’
So 12 years later, we may perhaps break the record by a couple of hundredths of a degree? And that’s “alarming”? Then what will the record be by 2100, a tenth of a degree more than now? OMG.
Climate Change Witch Doctors were freezing because the earth is too hot….
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2010/12/climate-change-witch-doctors-were-freezing-because-the-earth-is-too-hot/
So the heat is officially dead then? The cold won.
Someone tell Kevn T.
All very interesting from a statistical point of view but I would have preferred to see surface “skin” temperatures.
Not sure if we have land skin Ts but we do have sea skin Ts and they look decidedly cool everywhere with the exception of some warm patches mainly in the Atlantic. How does that compare to say 1998?
Am I wrong in thinking that in the context of AGW, skin Ts are more relevant?
Any T readings, be it ~1.5mtrs above the ground in the case of stevenson screens or higher up in the case of satellites may be polluted with local weather conditions.
I live in East Yorkshire where Paul Hudson gives the local forecast. Reports from a couple of colleagues tell me about day time temperatures of -12 degrees Celsius on their way to York. Now I know these measurements are only from car thermometers but they are showing several degrees colder than Paul is telling us. Where are his sensors sited? I am sure Paul isn’t changing the temperatures but just to let people here know that it is even colder than Paul’s article suggests.
All 5 Yorkshire weather stations are in the lowlands, while most of the population live in the cities up from there. They are geographically close to each other in England’s largest counties. The 4 (no longer 3, sigh) counties have plenty of hills and I live in the hillier bits. There can be significant short term differences in temperature. Today the weather stations went down to -15 or more with fog, while we had cloud cover and light (not forecast) snow. We are about 15 kilometres from Dishforth, 35 from Topcliffe and 40 from Leeming (which is the station allocated to our postcode in the BBC forecasts). In fact we normally only get snow when it is not forecast for us. A mini example of the problems of averaging, weather modelling and forecasting. Maybe the expert commenters can tell me if this has any local or general significance. Well beyond me as a casual observer of this website, I’m afraid.
But keep up the blogging, Paul. Always more interesting than the other BBC forecasters.
I agree the BBC’s articles can sometimes stretch the idea of ‘impartiality’ – which is something the Beeb regard as a strength. On occasion I do email their reporters, especially Richard Black, and to be fair he does respond in kind after I pick him up on his subjective article writing and choice of headlines.
At the same time, something the BBC cannot erase from history are Live comments made especially on their News24 channel. Last year I recall an infamous exchange when Peter Sissons (one of their newsreaders) challenged someone over what the temperature record actually shows us over the past 15 years – I think Peter is most obviously at the least very open minded on the subject and does speak his own thoughts, as he kept pointing out to the guy there had been no new warming!
Now, yesterday there was another interesting exchange on BBC Breakfast sometime between 8 and 10 – I’m sure iPlayer still has a record of it. They were interviewing Jay Wyn (BBC Weather presenter) and at the same time reading out comments sent in from people. The News presenters picked him up on some people are saying “Where are all the Global Warming scientists now hiding who usually roll out to tell us the Mild Winters we usually have are all down o global warming” – Jay looked a bit put out TBH and sort of Hmm and Rrrr’d. The presenters then went on ask more questions people had emailed such as “Where are all the Milder and Wetter Winters we are now told to expect” – Again Jay looked very awkward and even the News presenters said “I know you might not want to get involved in some of these political issues” – Again Jay sort of frowned and said We would have to review what we may have got wrong, then sort of quickly rephrased what he said and mentioned some scientists say we would have a Colder period before it got Warmer again. An interesting comment I thought! I think Jay was very put out by some of the questions, and may be a little off guard!
Anyway, I must try and dig out the footage, as it was only y’day and the above is what I recalled from memory – so unless the Beeb have edited their iPlayer recording there is a prime example of how some of these important issues are infact aired on the BBC – generally in the regime of ‘Live’ interviews which are rather harder to control than a BBC Web article which can be changed.
I’ll post the link later when I search out the relevant footage on y’days exchange.
Paul Hudson is my local weatherman. A really likeable cheeky, chirpy chap with a big sense of fun.
It’s great to see he has carried on his tradition of writing stories his employers have to scramble around and re-spin. They dare not sack him, he’s a Yorkshire housewive’s icon. There would be a riot, with frying pans being waved around. 🙂
Scotland is at a virtual standstill today, people stuck overnight or spending virtually all day getting home have barely seen a gritter on many major roads and most minor roads haven’t seen one for weeks.
The Met office forecast on Sunday was for “fog” … I know because I checked the forecast on Sunday afternoon before I removed the tarpaulin and snow from a flat roof to do some work on it this week.
And the BBC are being their usual sycophant to the abysmal Met Office forecasts we get in Scotland (typified by the way Scotland hardly features on BBC met Office weather maps) and the pro-global-warming nonsense BBC can’t see their own part in this fiasco in pushing the “it’s going to get warmer … children won’t know what snow is” rubbish.
Come on if, the BBC had an ounce of sense, they’d realise that if even a fraction of the 1billion we are spending on foreign made wind mincers were spent on snow ploughs then we wouldn’t be at a standstill today after a mere couple of inches of snow!
I really do question the validity (or even accuracy) of satellite measurements of troposphere temperatures. How do we determine whether tropospheric temperatures mean anything as far as “climate” is concerned? Does the exhaust temperature of my car bear any relationship to the temperature inside the passenger compartment?
And whoever controls the temperature sensing algorithms used by the satellites therefore controls the temperature (think of Apple’s re-calibration of the iPhone’s signal strength indicator for a perfect example of conning everybody).
I have very strong memories of the UK summer of 1998 which was swelteringly hot (by UK standards) and I do not recall extremely cold winters at the start and end of the year. Contrast that with 2010 with extermely cold first and last quarters, and a mediocre summer in the middle.
2010 as hot as 1998? Don’t make me laugh.
I think the lessor spotted global warming is going extinct.
The last one was allegedly seen on Antarctica, in the dump, but verification assured us it was a completely different species, aptly named by it’s discoverer, globum Mc Coolium