This is one of those Jeane Dixon style predictions, written in such general terms that it can be provable by just about any summer in the future. According to the Wikipedia article on her, John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term “the Jeane Dixon effect,” which refers to a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions. Sound familiar?
Example in 2012: Hey, there was a new record July temperature in North Podunk Saskatchewan (apologies to Kate), See, we were right! Worse, while citing an NCDC report that agrees with their prediction, the author conveniently avoids the conclusion made by NOAA last year related to the Russian heat wave of 2010 which has no linkage to “global warming” but was the same sort of blocking high pressure setup that caused the US heat wave this year.
I provide this press release for entertainment purposes only.
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Researchers predict extreme summertime temperatures to become a regular occurrence
To happen even if expected increases in global temperatures are avoided
In an article in the current issue of the journal Climatic Change Letters, Boston University researchers have estimated the impact near-term increases in global-mean temperatures will have on summertime temperatures in the U.S. and around the globe.The “2°C global warming target” is in reference to the current international efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases and limit human-induced global-mean near-surface temperature increases to 2°C (3.5°F) relative to the pre-industrial era, three-fifths of which has already occurred.
“We wanted to determine the impact such a temperature increase might have upon the frequency of seasonal-mean temperature extremes in various regions of the world, even if we were to avoid this target” said Bruce Anderson, associate professor of geography and environment and the study’s principal author.
“In particular, we wanted to determine if preventing the global-mean temperature increase from reaching this threshold would prevent extreme temperature values from becoming a normal occurrence in these regions.” Anderson’s research indicates that if the 2°C increase were to come to pass 70–80% of the land surface will experience summertime temperature values that exceed observed historical extremes (equivalent to the top 5% of summertime temperatures experienced during the second half of the 20th century) in at least half of all years.
In other words, even if an increase in the global mean temperature is limited to 2°C, current historical extreme values will still effectively become the norm for 70-80% of the earth’s land surface. “Many regions of the globe—including much of Africa, the southeastern and central portions of Asia, Indonesia, and the Amazon—are already committed to reaching this point, given current amounts of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere” said Anderson. Global-mean temperatures are expected to increase an additional 0.6°C (1°F) over the coming decades even if no more carbon dioxide, methane, or other heat-trapping gases are added to the atmosphere.
In the United States, the impacts are expected to be most severe over the western third of the country. “In these regions, if the 2°C threshold is passed, it is more likely than not that every summer will be an extreme summer compared with today,” said Anderson. Further, the region is expected to follow soon after Africa, Asia, and the Amazon as one in which summertime temperature extremes will become the norm. “While the western third of the U.S. is not committed to reaching such a situation, it is certainly on the brink,” said Anderson.“While previous work, including our own and that of researchers at Stanford, has highlighted that summertime temperature extremes, and how frequently they occur, will change significantly even in response to relatively small increases in global-mean temperatures, the extent and immediacy of the results really caught us off guard,” said Anderson.
“Because these results are referenced to increases in global-mean temperatures, and not some particular time or change in amount of heat-trapping gases, they hold whether we reach this global-mean temperature increase in the next 40-50 years as currently projected, or the next century.
They really are telling us that this is a temperature threshold that poses significant risks to our lives and livelihoods.” Extreme summertime temperatures killed tens of thousands in Europe in 2003 and Russia in 2010 and produced over $50 billion in agriculture losses across the central and eastern U.S. in 1988. In addition, at least 18 states, including much of the southern and south-eastern U.S., suffered through these types of extreme conditions this past summer.
“We find that the results are sensitive to both the observational dataset used to determine the range of historical variability and the numerical model data used to determine the grid-point increases in future temperatures,” said Anderson. Despite these caveats, the findings suggest that substantial fractions of the globe could experience seasonal-mean temperature extremes with high regularity well before the 2°C global-warming target is reached.
Contact information for the authors:
Bruce AndersonAssociate Professor of Geography and EnvironmentBoston UniversityPhone: +1-617-353-4807Email: brucea@bu.edu
NOTE: The National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is scheduled to release its latest (August 2011) State of the Climate update on Thursday, September 8 by 1:00 p.m. EDT. The update, which relates directly to the findings in the Climatic Change Letters article, can be found here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/
Reference
Anderson BT (2011) Near-term increase in frequency of seasonal temperature extremes prior to the 2°C global warming target. Climatic Change Letters. DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0196-4.
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Here’s the paper abstract:
Given current international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit human-induced global-mean near-surface temperature increases to 2°C, relative to the pre-industrial era, we seek to determine the impact such a temperature increase might have upon the frequency of seasonal-mean temperature extremes; further we seek to determine what global-mean temperature increase would prevent extreme temperature values from becoming the norm. Results indicate that given a 2°C global mean temperature increase it is expected that for 70–80% of the land surface maximum seasonal-mean temperatures will exceed historical extremes (as determined from the 95th percentile threshold value over the second half of the 20th Century) in at least half of all years, i.e. the current historical extreme values will effectively become the norm. Many regions of the globe—including much of Africa, the southeastern and central portions of Asia, Indonesia, and the Amazon—will reach this point given the “committed” future global-mean temperature increase of 0.6°C (1.4°C relative to the pre-industrial era) and 50% of the land surface will reach it given a future global-mean temperature increase of between 0.8 and 0.95°C (1.6–1.75°C relative to the pre-industrial era). These results suggest substantial fractions of the globe could experience seasonal-mean temperature extremes with high regularity, even if the global-mean temperature increase remains below the 2°C target.
DeanL says:
September 10, 2011 at 8:25 am
The games played here are amusing – you pretend the contention is that AGW has caused events such as these when no scientist ever makes such claims. But to claim that the world having indisputably warmed has had no effect on weather events is just idiotic.
Still, I guess without these dishonesties, there wouldn’t be much for you to say, would there?
Speaking of dishonesties, let’s just dissect a couple of porkies of yours, shall we?
1) No one is “pretending the contention is that AGW has caused events such as these”. The contention is that a) CAGW is real, and b) CAGW will cause more and more “extreme events” such as the Russian and the American heat waves in the future.
2) No one is claiming that the slight warming (much of it exaggerated by issues with UHI, faulty sensor placement, and station drop out), since the LIA doesn’t affect weather. The hysterical claims of climate bedwetters, though, are unsupported by the facts, and are merely indicative of weather and/or climate amnesia.
But, I guess without your dishonesties, you wouldn’t have much to say, would you?
At risk of stating the obvious: There Ain’t No Such Thing As Global Warming.
H.R. says:
September 9, 2011 at 8:02 pm
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it will be cold in winter.
Signed,
Nostradamus
What? Without any modelling?
Signed,
Houdini
DeanL says:
September 10, 2011 at 8:25 am
Dean, check these out…The literature says it aint so…
Over the period of 1965–2008, the global TC activity, as measured by storm days, shows a large amplitude fluctuation regulated by the ENSO and PDO, but has no trend, suggesting that the rising temperature so far has not yet an impact on the global total number of storm days.” Wang, B., Y. Yang, Q.‐H. Ding, H. Murakami, and F. Huang, 2010. Climate control of the global tropical storm days (1965–2008). Geophysical Research Letters,
“(1) There is no significant overall long-term trend common to all indices in cyclone activity in the North Atlantic and European region since the Dalton minimum.
Bärring and Fortuniak, 2009 International Journal of Climatology,
“Over the past 24 yr, the land falling tropical cyclones clearly show variability on inter-annual and inter-decadal time scales, but there is no significant trend in the landfall frequency. from Zhang et al., 2009
Chan and Xu write “An important finding in this part of the study is that none of the time series shows a significant linear temporal trend, which suggests that global warming has not led to more landfalls in any of the regions in Asia.” from Chan and Xu, 2009 Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 465, 3011-3021.
Phillipines 1902 – 2005 Annual TLP from 1902 to 2005 using the two definitions shows dominant periodicity of about 32 years before 1940 and of about 10–22 years after 1945; however, no trend is found.” Chan and Xu, 2009 International Journal of Climatology, 29, 1285-1293.
The 1900–01 to 2006–07 trends in the annual percentage of high- and low-extreme snowfall years for the entire United States are not statistically significant.”
Sorrel, P., B. Tessier, F. Demory, N. Delsinne, D. Mouaze. 2009.
France, …no evidence is found of any increase in the frequency or intensity of storms, and in fact, the large storms of southern France seemed more frequent more than 100 years ago. Sabatier, P., L. Dezileau, M. Condomines, L. Briqueu, C. Colin, F. Bouchette, M. Le Duff, and P. Blanchemanche. 2008. Reconstruction of paleostorm events in a coastal lagoon (Hérault, South of France). Marine Geology,
Analyses show that although economic losses from weather related hazards have increased, anthropogenic climate change so far did not have a significant impact on losses from natural disasters. The observed loss increase is caused primarily by increasing exposure and value of capital at risk. Laurens M. Bouwer Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2010
The Robert Wood greenhouse experiment (1909) shows that a transparent closed box can warm up to 55ºC with an upper limit given by: at mid-day, a fully insulated box as above would receive 1368W/m2 solar radiation to reach a temperature of (Stefan-Boltzman law):
T = {1368/0.000000056704}^0.25 = 394.1ºK = 121.0ºC.
Thus heat waves can become very hot, regardless of global warming or position on Earth, IF cooling happens exclusively by out-radiation. Fortunately there are two moderating processes:
1) thermal conduction and cooling by air.
2) evaporation of moisture.
Depending on these two, mid-day maximum temperatures can assume a wide range and become ‘unusual’ if an atmospheric blocking layer exists, little wind and no moisture. In this mix, moisture is of cardinal importance, such that the summer begins only if most if not all soil moisture has been evaporated.
What most people don’t recognise is that ALL moisture comes from the sea, carried landward by sea winds. This transport occurs mainly when the sea is warmer than the land. Just as warm seas and cold land bring moisture, cold seas and warm land deprive moisture. Hence rain begets rain and drought begets more drought, and heat waves more heat waves.
Quite counter-intuitively, droughts belong to a cooling world whereas rains and floods to a warming world. As the world is now cooling due to reduced solar activity, droughts and heat waves become the norm, much like in the Dust Bowl years. Of course cooling is not part of the CO2 scam.
From Some like it Hot, I just changed the first word.
Sugar: CAGW? Isn’t that terribly dangerous?
Junior: I’ll say. I had two ponies drowned under me.
http://www.energy.unimelb.edu.au/uploads/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Report_v1.pdf
This has a lot of alarmist language, but is there truth in it? If Willis or anyone knows how accurate this report is I would be grateful. It appears Andasol 1 & 2 solar-thermal power plants have been successful and the implications would seem to me that investment in this technology in Australia would be a very good idea.
And once again they miss the point in a way that is so devastatingly telling: just because an event or hypothesis is not statistically significant does not mean that the opposite is true. Of course “sceptics” failed to learn that scientific lesson when they started claiming that Jones’ statement, that the degree to which the global temperature had increased was not significant over a decade was interpreted as global temperature had ceased rising or was even falling.
Anthony’s claim I highlighted is false – simple as that.
Instead they present smokescreens and red herrings. Telling.
Regarding DeanL says:
September 11, 2011 at 12:11 am
My post to you of September 10, 2011 at 6:38 pm referenced 7 peer reviewed papers showing no increasing trend in severe events. Please read those words again. “no increasing trends”.
@ur momisugly Dean L; So your whole problem was with this statement: “Russian heat wave of 2010 which has no linkage to “global warming”? Perhaps he should have said: “Russian heat wave of 2010 which may possibly have something to do with a slightly warmer Earth, yet we can’t pinpoint exactly what that link might be, or even if it matters in the slightest”. Would that make you stop your pouting?
How about instead of nitpicking a headline you talk instead about what the article talks about? So far, all you’ve done is exhibit troll-like behavior, which is indeed telling.
No Bruce, what would make me happy would be if false statements weren’t made in the first place, particularly when the author of such statements pursues the opposition for what he claims are unscientifically based assertions regarding attribution to AGW.
But thanks for you admission.
DeanL: when we’re talking about a natural phenomenon that has happened many times before, the null-hypothesis is simple that the last “extreme” weather event is just that. To claim that it is caused by CAGW needs to be proved. Saying so that it is linked to global warming is therefor simply a lie. Just as all the other claims that we have more extreme weather events; not only because of the lack of evidence, there is even evidence against.
To me, saying that there is a link between ‘global warming’ and the ‘Russian heatwave’ is similar to saying that the aliens will come and kills is because of ‘global warming’. Proof is required and none is forthcoming,
@bushbunny Air pollution was not the vector of those deaths in 2003. Rather people with circulatory problems and elderly who cannot cope with heat very well. Also I doubt Paris reached 45C. The record for the region is around 40C, anything higher than that is unheard of anywhere north of the Alps (where Paris is). The recent heat waves didn’t break the long time records. They might have just touched them here and there.
@gofer: Lack of air condidtioning in many parts of Europe is a factor, but the reason is mostly cultural. Air con is just not very common in northern locations because people didn’t grow up with it, and perhaps they feel it’s not worth it for the relatively short periods of heat. Economy of energy prices plays a minor role. Besides people in northern climates have misconceptions about heat. They open all doors and windows all day because they think it cools the room down. While that is true for most of the year when it’s cool outside, the reverse is true during a heat wave. They don’t get it ..
Anorak2 Sept 12 at 2.22 Well I read that and also disbelieved it too. 45 C is extremely hot.
But the book I got it from was partial towards the AGW mentality. I have the book beside me.
Chapter p.58 – 61 Introductory paragraph – ‘…Paris in August 2003 felt like a city that was being slowly stiflied. With day time temperatures hitting 40 C, streets and pavements shimmered, tar stuck to car tyres and ice cream melted in seconds. Tourists wearing plastic, flip flops found their foot ware disintegrating as they walk..’
On page 60 the temp went up to 45C in Spain and in Southern England on August the 10h the temps soared to 38.5 C – and all time record.
Needless to say, on the front page it does add a paragraph ‘p.58 Heavy Weather (in bold lettering) It is the early morning in Paris, but the air is already thick with pollution. During the heatwave, pollution figures hit record highs. A cloud of contamination from millions of car exhausts enveloped the city, the hot sun turning fumes into poisonous photochemical smog…’
Reader’s Digest ‘When nature turns Nasty’ – How air earth, water and fire have forged our World’ First published 2007 http://www.readersdigest.co.uk.
Actually it is quite a good book really. Although on occasions they put in ‘due to Global warming’.
@bushbunny
With day time temperatures hitting 40 C
40C is credible. It’s probably close to their all time record, but not beyond.
streets and pavements shimmered, tar stuck to car tyres and ice cream melted in seconds. Tourists wearing plastic, flip flops found their foot ware disintegrating as they walk..
That can happen, but it’s not as unusual as the paragraph makes it sound. The sun heats the black asphalt to much higher temperatures than the ambient air, which then melts or causes other things to melt. It can happen at less extreme temperatures, I remember melting road surface on shoes from my childhood in Germany, at lower temperatures and quite a bit more northerly than Paris.
On page 60 the temp went up to 45C in Spain
Spain tends to be hot though. 🙂 I don’t know their record, but 5 degrees hotter than central European sites don’t surprise me that much.
Southern England on August the 10h the temps soared to 38.5 C – and all time record.
Very well, that is believable, but not as sentational as they make it sound. Weather records do happen even without global warming. 🙂 It would be a record even if it surpassed the previous one by only .1C. It would be interesting to compare the second hottest measurement from another year. Southern England has had heat waves in the high 30s before, it is not really out of the usual.