According to NCDC's own data, 2010 was not the warmest year in the United States, nor even a tie

MattN says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:00 am
I am the farthest thing from being an AGW proponent, but I’m 100% sure the NCDC’s “hottest year” designation for 2010 was for the entire planet, not the US. This is kind of a red herring.
Not really, imo, because it re-emphasizes, by using the still not well known U.S. vs World temperature record disjunction, the fact that what the ipcc style Climate Science does not tell us continues to reflect the same way on what it does tell us.
As I recall it, back when the fact of the failure of the U.S. to conform to Climate Sciences’s AGW was demonstrated about 4-5 yrs.[?] ago by Steve McIntyre on Climate Audit, the warmists immediately started saying it didn’t matter, since the U.S. was “only about 2%” of the Earth’s surface, and that was all there was to it! They didn’t even mention that the U.S. comprises about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, which McIntyre’s blog instead quickly noted as part of its consideration of the disparity between the records.
In other words, back then, the warmist scientists already seemed way too unscientifically interested in vigorously ignoring the possible greater problem that the U.S. temp. figures showed everyone else once Steve M. displayed them to the world: that the rest of the world’s [ROW] figures might in fact show the same kind of thing, once people start actually looking at them independently – for example, such as the CET record does show, which I think Tonyb was very instrumental in bringing to everyone’s attention here at WUWT; the second problem Steve’s work possibly implied was that the U.S. should have much more reliable records on average than the ROW.
These considerations could certainly raise a valid question within any objective person as to whether we can we really trust Climate Science’s whole GMT.
By now, imo, knowing even more about how ipcc style Climate Science does its “science” – it’s not – the validity of what the NCDC says is much more in doubt than it was back then. I don’t believe hardly anything official Climate Science says anymore, and certainly not its always hockeysticking “hottest year ever” claims.
And I actually hope the “world” is in fact warming! Whereas, even more bizarrely, ipcc Climate Science desperately wants us to commit suicide, if it is warming, “before it’s too late”!

Anybody can easily tell it was all a lie… The earth has been cooling for 12 years … Just plot a trend line over temp records since 1998.. Then tell me the earth is getting warmer…the slope obviously declines…. Its all government manipulation I yell ya..

If the world is not warming much in North America and Europe then how can we get a better understanding of the accuracy of measurements showing warming in Canada and the Antarctic?

Anthony, exactly.
And I can report that in my refrigerator, temperatures have in fact FALLEN dramatically since I installed it. I’d further note that at every moment during its use I’ve been using greenhouse gas-emitting natural gas to generate the electricity to power it.
Take that, Hansen.
This is the kind of clear thinking one gets here with Anthony “I take advantage of stupid people to fund my blog traffic and pay me thousands each month” Watts.
[One hopes sincerely that temperatures did indeed fall dramatically … then rise and level off equally dramatically each time the door was opened and shut. Otherwise, the fridge would be useless in a short order. Robt]

@kdkd January 14, 2011 at 3:50 am:

And USA warming has what to do with global warming? Looks like clutching at straws to me.

Let’s see, the US was the 13th warmest, while South America had about its coldest winter ever, Australia had one of its coldest winters AND summers, Europe had a very cool summer and a horrible blizzard-filled winter. And the SSTs were not at record levels, but dropping for the last 1/3 of the year, due to the oncoming La Niña.
It SNOWED in Australia the day before their summer solstice, and not just in one place. No place in Australia that day averaged over 40°F – not even Darwin. Where was the snow? Some was almost exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn – the SH equivalent of Havana, Cuba. Can anyone here believe that if it snowed in Havana (or Miami) on June 20th that people wouldn’t be asking WTF about “hottest year” bullcrap? If it snows in Miami on DEC20th, it would be huge news, much less the day before official summer. (Yes, and now, kdkd, you will pull out the “weather isn’t climate” pap, as is done when it suits your purposes. . . )
With all those places weighing in on the not hottest side of the ledger, just WHERE did all the heat come from? These are places mostly with the best coverage anywhere. There must have been SOME huge areas that had record highs. Where were they? And when you find them, then go look for how many places had record lows. THEN tell us they aren’t cooking the books.
Some records were set in Russia and Pakistan – one period of a few weeks of big-time heat – and those are the only non-adjusted data out there that argue for 2010 being so hot. Frankly, I think the fudging is so rampant they think they can just keep adjusting and adjusting and everyone will buy it forever. When the UHI adjustments are done properly, all those climatologists are going to look like the biggest idiots on the planet – and no one will trust them with their data ever again.

Roger Otip: “For the past three decades temperatures have bee
Roger, please answer me why there has been no warming in Philadelphia PA since 1874. Is it because CO2 avoids the city of brotherly love? If you can give me a rational answer as to how the globe can warm up due to CO2 but avoid Philly then I will believe the AGW meme.

“Green Acres says:
January 14, 2011 at 6:39 am
For those carping about noting that the US wasn’t particularly warm, of course it makes a difference. It’s supposed to be global warming, right? Well, clearly it isn’t global as the US and many other major populated areas were not warm. ”
————-
Sorry but you completely misunderstand and misrepresent the issue. Climate change is about the effects on the planet as a whole. This does not mean that the warming is the same at every point on the globe, some parts will be hotter, colder, drier, wetter, calmer, stormier etc etc. This is called weather and as climate change increases will get more extreme and more unpredictable. The issue is that on a global scale the long term warming will shift and change the climate in ways that will be damaging for our way of life.
It is a simplistic and unrealistic view of the issue to assume that the planet is so uniform and predictable that it is say 0.16 degree warmer everywhere at the same time.

While I’m just beginning to understand the what I’m reading here at WUWT about how greenhouse gases are supposed to work, it seems to me that the US should be warmer than the rest of world, not colder.
My understanding is that CO2 reflects some of the long wave radiation from the surface back to the surface, making the surface warmer than it would be otherwise. It is also my understanding that this is a continuous process.
Also, the US is second, behind China, in the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Since it takes a finite time and distance for the CO2 to difuse, it stands to reason that CO2 should be higher over the US (although I have not seen CO2 readings for US) than over the ocean or other areas with lower CO2 emissions.
Since CO2 is higher over the US the greenhouse effect should be more pronounced over the US, and the average yearly US temperature should be higher than the global average temperature. Wonder why it is not.

Erik Ramberg says:
January 14, 2011 at 7:21 am
“Can it possibly be true that no one here recalls that tens of thousands of people died in Russia due to the raging fires and record smashing heat wave? In addition, the Arctic saw 5 degree C anomalies for the year. The global number is correct. Don’t think that these anomalies will go away or never affect the U.S.”
Yes, the heat wave in western Russia lasted how long – 3 weeks? And the Arctic temperatures are modeled by DHI:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2010.png
As you can see, the Arctic was below average between day 140 and day 240 in 2010. The rest of the year was mostly above average, but nothing at all like the 5K you claim. Annual average according to DMI seems to be more in the order of 0.5-1K, ie about 1/5 to 1/10 of your claim.
Where do you get your information from Erik, do you just make it up as you go along? And based on this nonsense you conclude that “The global number is correct.” ?
Please substantiate your claim that “the Arctic saw 5 degree C anomalies” for the year (2010).

RE: Ron C., January 15, 2011 at 8:52 am
The tenths and hundredths can be meaningful, but only if the error interval is included in the analysis. NOAA has started making this more of a habit in their monthly climate reports, but GISS has not done so to my knowledge. If GISS started making this standard practice, I would put higher stock in their numbers because then we could have a better sense of how much fudging and estimating really IS going on in their analysis.

While EMS’ writeup is correct in general, there are a few minor errors and some other clarifications he should have added. The “Dominic” he debates is wrong for reasons beyond (in addition to) what EMS cites, too. He closed off comments so I cannot add these points.
Mark

RE: Dave in Canmore, January 15, 2011 at 11:21 am:
Quote: “If global warming due to CO2 only affects some areas, but these areas have the same concentrations of CO2 as everywhere else, something is amok in this theory.”
I don’t think the theory says that CO2 only affects some areas and not others. To my understanding, it says that the effect will be global, but affect different regions in different ways at different times.
Suppose the effect of warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere was to change the position and amplitude of the jet stream. That would cause some places to be warmer than they were before and some to be cooler simply because the jet stream shifted positions. Similarly, it doesn’t guarantee that the same location will feel the same effect throughout the year. A change in ocean or atmospheric patterns may cause one location to be cooler during the summer but warmer during the winter. It’s this premise which keeps the claim that AGW will cause more droughts and more flooding from being complete nonsense.
I may be wrong, but that’s my understanding of things.