Here’s an opportunity for crowd-sourcing a rebuttal to Climate Central’s Top Ten Climate Events of 2010. I think it is mistitled, and should be Climate Central’s Top Ten Weather Events of 2010.
Of course it OK when they do it, because as we all know, weather is not climate except when it fits the AGW narrative, which is CC’s founding mission. The Climate Central effort here with this list seems rather weak and transparent, when you look at the story behind the story for the list they have compiled.
Get a load of this paragraph:
This year also featured plenty of extreme events, from crippling snowstorms in the American Northeast to blazing heat and deadly flooding in Pakistan. Many of these events have already been at least partially linked to natural variations that occur in the Earth’s climate system.
Um, that’s called weather.
Here’s the list with some rebuttals of my own to get started. Readers please add your own in comments, and I’ll add them to this list.
1. Mid-Atlantic Cities Break All-Time Snowfall Records
Last time I checked, it takes two to tango. Cold and weather patterns are a factor also. And, can you tie single weather events to climate?
Readers can help fill in this section with more examples.
2. Flooding in Nashville, Tennessee
Gosh, it floods somewhere in the USA almost every year. For example the Great Ohio River flood of 1937. Was that caused by global warming climate change climate disruption back then too?
3. Record-breaking Heat Waves and Droughts in Africa and the Middle East
Gosh, it gets hot there? We have about 100 years of records, some of that natural variation you allude to can’t be in play in such a short slice of the planetary history? Assume AGW is not a factor; is it not unreasonable to expect new records to be set outside of a 100 year data sample?
Readers can help fill in this section with examples.
4. Russian Heat Wave
Gee, even NOAA doesn’t think this has anything to do with global warming climate change climate disruption:
Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia.
I guess Climate Central never got that memo.
5. U.S. Summer Heat Waves
2010 had heat waves, so did other years in the USA. When was it again that we had the most frequency of heat waves? Oh, yeah, the 1930’s.
And yes, I know the graph does not go to 2010, the graphs above were published in 2006, for pre-2000 data, but perhaps readers can locate an update?
6. Pakistan Monsoon and Flooding
Isn’t there a long history of this sort of thing?
From: Khandekar M. K., “2010 Pakistan Floods: Climate Change Or Natural Variability?”
(October 2010), Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (Vol.38, No.5).
As the graph shows, rainfall records for the region prove how floods and droughts have occurred irregularly over a 150-year period and show no discernible significant trend.
Khandekar, also once a research scientist for Environment Canada, and an IPCC reviewer, sums up how Pakistan’s climate record shows no human signal:
“Among other droughts and floods, the monsoon rains were exceptionally heavy in 1917 with extensive floods over many areas of the country, while 1972 was a major drought year resulting in sharply reduced grain yields. The decade of the 1930s experienced in general surplus rains over most of India with three flood years, namely 1933, 1936 and 1938 (Bhalme & Mooley 1980). It is of interest to note that the1930s were part of the dust bowl years on the Canadian/US Prairies. A possible teleconnective link between Indian monsoon flood and Canadian Prairie drought has been speculated by Khandekar (2004).”
His conclusion:
“A rapid transition of the ENSO phase from El Niño to La Niña between spring and summer of 2010 appears to be the key element in triggering a vigorous monsoon of 2010 over the Indian subcontinent…….the 2010 Pakistan floods, although seemingly unprecedented, were well within natural variability of monsoonal climate over the Indian subcontinent.”
7. Third Lowest Arctic Sea Ice Extent
Yes, but here’s what Climate Central won’t show you:
or this:
8. Lake Mead Record Low
Yes, but it has dipped low before, and again, is a 70 year record really enough to claim a long term event outside the bounds of natural variability?
Figure 8. Time series of average monthly Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) (upper, smoothed) and standardized anomaly index (SAI) of cool+warm-season precipitation (lower). Arrows indicate regime shifts of the PDO.
The USGS says in Precipitation History of the Mojave Desert Region, 1893–2001:
Precipitation in the desert region is modestly but significantly correlated with the average PDO (computed from October to September) in the year preceding (lag 1) and the year of the cool+warm (lag 0) season (fig. 7). The three regime shifts of the PDO are largely in-phase with the annual and seasonal precipitation time series, particularly since the mid-1940s (fig. 8). The mid-century dry conditions show this in phase relation, which coincides with a period of low indices and a prolonged cool phase of the PDO. The early neutral to positive phase of the PDO is associated, although in a complicated manner, with the relatively wet conditions during the early half of the century. The strong warm phase of the PDO beginning around 1977 is readily associated with the wet climate beginning in 1978. Of particular interest is the downward shift in the PDO beginning in 1999 with concomitant decreased precipitation that has continued through the winter of 2002 with only slight relief in winter 2003. The unusually dry climate in the Mojave Desert region since 1998 is likely associated with a nearly continuous belt of high pressure in the northern mid-latitudes that produced drought conditions elsewhere in the United States, the Mediterranean region, southern Europe, and central Asia. This global-scale drying was evidently related to unusually cool and persistent SST in the eastern Pacific Ocean (Hoerling and Kumar, 2003). The weather, SST, and surface-pressure patterns of the past several years suggest that a transition to another PDO regime is presently underway (Gedalof and Smith, 2001). This transition could affect the climate of the Mojave Desert region.
Well, that’s inconvenient.
9. Amazon Drought
Wide open for readers.
10. Final Annual Temperature Ranking
Um, no, it’s not final yet. Final is the word you use when all the data is in, we still await December. But, it seems there’s been a lot of pressure to make 2010 the “hottest year ever” in advance of the year end.
Ric Werne wrote: “Perhaps some people here aren’t familiar with max/min thermometers. These have iron rods in the measuring tubes that get pushed by mercury but don’t get pulled back. An “observation” record entails recording the max and min, then using a magnet to reset the iron rods for the next 24 hours.”
Some minor problems with your suggestion.
1) There is no mention of min/max thermometers in the NOAA description of their operations
2) Given a set-up that records min/max temps, why would a change from dusk to 9am impose a cooling bias? Does the max somehow get smaller between the previous day and 9am? Does the min cool off ?
NOAA purports to have an ability to track decadal temperature movements of less than .2 degrees, it adjusts raw temperatures by 2 degrees based on measurements of other stations and it can’t even impose consistency within its network for the time that data is recorded.
How any meaning can be attached to what they produce is beyond my understanding.
2. Flooding in Nashville Tenn.
The Cumberland River reached nearly 12 feet above flood stage and it topped out just under 52 feet before the waters began to finally recede. Hundreds of people were rescued from their homes by boat and canoe.
Cumberland reaches 56.2 feet Jan 1, 1927
http://www.lrn.usace.army.mil/history/dates_in_history.htm
Mark and Mrejen Borders says:
December 17, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Barry Day says:
December 17, 2010 at 1:50 pm
AS PAUL HOGAN WOULD PUT IT,NO MANN”(flashes out HUGE graph)THIS IS CLIMATE!”
Right on que,right on time and just what the doctor ordered!!
Warm periods icecap
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Warm_periods.jpg
Mark and Mrejen Borders says:
“You want to explain this? What is that chart, did anyone else look carefully at it? Look at the numbers on the right side. A little diversion there, what’s up. Don’t ya have any better than that?”
Barry Day says:
It’s just the famous Greenland ice core record,that’s all and is clearly labeled underneath along with the published paper information there as well.
I don’t know about you but I learned about +’s and -‘s before I started school and was able to read in third grade.
————–
LONGEST THERMOMETER RECORD IN THE WORLD
http://i49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
Mark and Mrejen Borders says:
“2010 – 1660 = 350 years Is that enough time to make any conclusions about something as diverse as climate, or weather.”
Barry Day says:Why don’t you tell that to the one tree hockey schtick team and those who start at the low cold 70’s and the famous quote”before industrialisation”
—————
BEST GRAPH AND INFORMATION
http://www.sustainableoregon.com/temphist.html
Same as first chart, what is this representing? The numbers on the right the numbers are smaller at the top of the chart larger at the bottom. But the info the the right of the chart says warm to the top, warm should be higher numbers, right? So what are the numbers on the chart?
Beyond that I noticed that the chart does not follow the bell curve of statics even accounting for the outliers, what’s up with that? Is statistic a lie? Maybe the earth really is flat.
Barry Day says:
Sheesh!! Maybe some can’t read or need glasses, me thinks.
We need to adjust some data?
I think it is time for someone to investigate and audit. This definately needs some fact-finding – then fire someone.
Does anyone believe that the U.S. has only checked it’s temperature at 9:00 am since 1980’s?
Where is the hourly data?
I think we may have a crazy driver at the wheel of NOAA that needs to be locked up before he runs the rest of the U.S. off the road.
Jeff, you need more Classical education. The root, tele, just means “distant”. So he’s saying there’s a long-range relationship between the two types of events. Could be caused by many things, but there are many, many such connections across the globe.
So it doesn’t mean the Indian Monsoon is phoning up the Canadian Prairies and making mutual plans. It’s just that both are part of a larger pattern.
Maybe an example can clear up the confusion.
Here are the colors of weather for Oregon. While it looks and feels damn cold, all is normal, though records are being set everywhere. If it were Summer and we had a heat wave, that would be normal weather too.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/
Here is the description of Oregon climate:
http://www.city-data.com/states/Oregon-Climate.html
There has been no climate change in Oregon whatsoever. Its climate description is as valid today as it was a century ago.
We are going through a period of weather pattern variation change within that climate. And that pattern is currently towards the cold side. This could be short term or long term. But it is well within the climate range of Oregon. If next we suffer a warming trend, again, it would be well within the climate range of Oregon.
Smokey:
“GISS and NOAA are lying for continued grant money. Can there be any doubt?”
It’s not just GISS and NOAA. All entities (academic groups, government agencies) receiving government money for climate research (the “Climate Ca$h”) must justify their budgets every year and, in the case of non-government groups, apply for new research funding through NSF, DOE etc. High profile press releases (no matter how hysterical and ridiculous) and reports go a long way towards ensuring this continued funding. It’s the climate industry’s definition of “sustainability”…
Smokey says: December 17, 2010 at 9:06 pm
OK, I’m glad to help out:
Here’s the daily sea ice concentration: click. [Courtesy of the esteemed and peer-reviewed Willis Eschenbach]. You will notice that the temperature bias claiming global warming is non-existent.
Sorry, I don’t see anything about temperature on that graph. And certainly nothing about the corrections that were made.
Next, NOAA itself shows declining temperatures: click
I get a VERY different graph when I visit NOAA.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/contiguous-us-temp.gif
Info about the graph is here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/faqs/climfaq14.html
It is interesting that the two graphs show very little correlation. Where did your graph come from and what data is it based on?
And GISS & NOAA show sharp temperature rises, while others do not: click
I can’t find any info about what temperature is being plotted over what area(s). The graph doesn’t seem to be linked to any other descriptions. What is being plotted?
Although GISS, like NOAA, sometimes shows steeply rising temperatures – after they “adjust” the temperature record. What are the odds of always showing rising temperatures, eh?
An interesting opinion, but again I see no data. What adjustments are you talking about, and why where they made? Until we have 5 adjustments in a row that all go the same way, we are still below the 95% confidence level that the string is not simply random. How many adjustments have been made? how many actually raise the recent values relative to the earlier measurements?
And GISS shows lousy correllation with CO2: click
How does this relate to adjustments to the temperature records?
More bogus GISS adjustments: click
A list of the changes in the analysis between when the two graphs were made is here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/
Which of these changes do you think are bogus? Or do you simply not like the results and assume that there must be something fishy?
Like NOAA, GISS “adjusts” the temperature record to always show increased warming. You asked for evidence. There it is.
I see lots of opinion — some of which might well contain valid critiques of the data. It is certainly intriguing that the increases are always positive (at least according to your claims), but I see no evidence in anything you gave.
GISS and NOAA are lying for continued grant money. Can there be any doubt?
Given the size of the organizations, I don’t doubt there are some lies going around. Given that the top administrators are political appointees, I’m sure there is considerable politicking occurring. But I no reason to believe it is is particularly worse than other areas of government, business, or academic research.
Yes, it is suspicious on the surface. It certainly is worth more investigation. It is worth having blogs dedicated to “holding feet to the fire”. When you have more specific evidence, I will think more about your accusations.
Not exactly on topic but there is a high pressure over Greenland today, on a surface map, that reads 1070. The Summit station is not reporting pressure. While not a record yet, there may be some records broken before the winter is out. The strong La Nina of 1989 set records in North America for high pressure.
The May-July period over the Canadian Prairies in 2010 was the wettest in 60 years and possibly 100 years
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/in-the-news/summer_2010_wettest_on_the_canadian_prairies_in_60_years1/
The Met office recently announced it was going to be adjusting some data as well.
I want to see unadjusted data, with possibly the adjusted superimposed, and a rationalle for the changes. Wouldn’t that be a nice graph to have a discussion over?
Mark and Merejen Borders says:
December 17, 2010 at 11:15 am
“Oh and, what will happen to the weather and climate if the Gulf Stream is stopped and no warm water enters the Atlantic Current?”
I must admit, I have no idea what would happen if the Gulf Stream stopped. However, it hasn’t, so why worry?
If I follow your line of thought: could you tell me what will happen if little green men from Mars land?
My observation is simple, (as perhaps I am.)
My local climate appears to be doing nothing unusual.
It cooled for a bit, warmed for a bit and now appears to be returning to the weather patterns of my youth.
Other places on Earth may have had a slightly different pattern, however, have other people over 55 noticed a tendency to a return to the weather of their youth?
DaveE.
I agree with David E. I’m 50Years old. Weather, sort of changes one way for a while, then the other, then seems to return. (Did I say something stupid like that)
Always was something unusual – my biggest fear is not CO2, it’s an asteroid followed by a hemaroid.
That is not to say we should not be taking care of our environment. We need to look at ways to reduce CO2. I just resent the panic, and hysteria, and the BS.
Everything is looking Italic to me.
[Reply: Tim Folkert reversed the slash and the i in the HTML closing tag. Occasionally that happens. Fixed now.]
Tim Folkerts says:
“Yes, it is suspicious on the surface. It certainly is worth more investigation. It is worth having blogs dedicated to “holding feet to the fire”. When you have more specific evidence, I will think more about your accusations.”
Supicious on the surface??
Tim, me boy, you are a true believer. I could never break through that wall of cognitive dissonance with enough “specific evidence” to ever convince you that the climate science system is rigged to the hilt.
Those endless adjustments to the raw temperature record are no different than if your bank made thousands of “adjustments” to your account over the years — and every one of them turned out to be in the bank’s favor.
Sure, it’s possible that your bank could make thousands of errors that all ended up taking your money. But c’mon, you can’t be that clueless about human nature. These government climate scientists are trying to protect their multi-billion dollar annual gravy train from being derailed, and one way they do it is to show the scariest possible charts and maps.
And since when is it smart to take anything the government says at face value? Are you that credulous?? Skepticism is based on not taking things at face value.
Where are the scientific skeptics in the government, or in the UN/IPCC? Every honest scientist is a skeptic, first and foremost. But almost every scientist in the U.S. government and in the UN lacks skepticism. And there are zero scientific skeptics in key positions. Ergo: there are no honest scientists in key positions.
Here is a government-produced USHCN map, with the original draft copy, and the final alarming red map released to the public — both using the same temperatures.
And here is a Hadley map, draft copy gif-transformed to the final version — both use the same temperatures [source].
They do the same thing with their temperature adjustments. Their motives: job security, pay raises, parties in Cancun, Bali, etc., and over $7 billion every year to spread around. And despite all that money being spent, there is still no empirical, testable evidence showing the amount of warming attributable to human activity. None.
The most rational conclusion is that the addition to a harmless, beneficial and tiny trace gas makes no measurable difference in temperature. Whatever difference there might be is too small to be meaningful. The “carbon” scare is all about the money. If you don’t see that, it’s because you don’t want to see it.
The ‘climate events’ piece is just applying the principles set out in a recent posting on climatecentral by David Ropeik (2010-12-13):
The Importance of Risk Perception…
= ‘How to deal with indifferents and deniers’. The main techniques:
MAKE IT LOCAL, AND PERSONAL. We don’t live globally. We live on streets in neighborhoods and communities. We don’t check out tomorrow’s “climate report.” We care about the weather. Make climate change, and adaptation, local.
MAKE IT CONCRETE, NOT ABSTRACT. Focus on specifics, not generalities. Not sea level rise in general, depicted on a map from outer space, but where various predictions would put the ocean on local streets. Not increased risk of severe weather in general, but what that could mean to the local floodplain. Not less snow, but what less melting snowpack could mean to local water supplies and rates. Talk about the details and potential realities, not the big picture concepts.
MAKE IT NOW, NOT LATER. There are more and more sources describing regional impacts of climate change. People are more likely to support adaptation to what is already occurring, or may happen soon, than what lies years down the road.
… etc.
If you go to the post and read the text, try an experiment: read the post as though it were written by a ‘denier’ trying to persuade CAGW believers of the true faith. Substitute ‘CAGW believer’ for ‘denier’. It works surprisingly well. The fact that Ropeik doesn’t realize that the self-evident ‘truth’ of everything he says is just a matter of his standpoint shows what a low-level windbag he is. (Hope that abuse doesn’t get me snipped!)
From the the sample of questions posed by the Borders (above), I am beginning to wonder what they are bordering on.