The usual suspects in the blogs and media have been bloviating about the record warmth of March and spinning it to redline for maximum fear factor, with the “loaded climate dice” theme. For example we have Andrew Freedman of Climate Central and his post, Global Warming May Have Fueled March Heat Wave Odds.
Scary big red maps aside, a quiet look at the data tells an entirely different story.
At least NCDC had the good sense in their report to avoid linking a weather pattern to AGW:
A persistent weather pattern during the month led to 25 states east of the Rockies having their warmest March on record. An additional 15 states had monthly temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. That same pattern brought cooler-than-average conditions to the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California.
Dr. Martin Hoerling on NOAA says much the same thing, attributing much to “randomness” and citing a similar event in March 1910 as seen below in the NCDC data plot:
It is difficult to make credible claims that March 2012 was AGW driven when looking at March 1910 when global CO2 was well below Dr. James Hansen’s posited “safe” 350 PPM level.
Hoerling also says that pulling an AGW signal out of this has “…statistical challenges in estimating how such a shift in distributions would alter extreme event odds, especially of the intensity observed in March 2012 whose magnitude was likely on the order of 4 – 6 standard deviations.”
Dr. Roy Spencer writes that the southerly wind component was the cause, and even shoots down the “yes but” before it gets out of the gate.
New Evidence Our Record Warm March was Not from Global Warming
by Dr. Roy Spencer
As part of my exploration of different surface temperature datasets, I’m examining the relationship between average U.S. temperatures and other weather variables in NOAA’s Integrated Surface Hourly (ISH) dataset. (I think I might have mistakenly called it “International” before, instead of “Integrated” Surface Hourly).
Anyway , one of the things that popped out of my analysis is related to our record warm March this year (2012). Connecting such an event to “global warming” would require either lazy thinking, jumping to conclusions, or evidence that the warmth was not caused by persistent southerly flow over an unusually large area for that time of year.
The U.S. is a pretty small place (about 2% of the Earth), and so a single high or low pressure area can cover most of the country. For example, if unusually persistent southerly flow sets up all month over most of the country, there will be unusual warmth. In that case we are talking about “weather”, not “climate change”.
Why do I say that? Because one of the basic concepts you learn in meteorology is “mass continuity”. If there is persistent and widespread southerly flow over the U.S., there must be (by mass continuity) the same amount of northerly flow elsewhere at the same latitude.
That means that our unusual warmth is matched by unusual coolness someplace else.
Well, guess what? It turns out that our record warm March was ALSO a record for southerly flow, averaged over the U.S. This is shown in the next plot, which comes from about 250 weather stations distributed across the Lower 48 (click for large version; heavy line is trailing 12 month average):
Weather records are broken on occasion, even without global warming. And here we see evidence that our March warmth was simply a chance fluctuation in weather patterns.
If you claim, “Well, maybe global warming caused the extra southerly flow!”, you then are also claiming (through mass continuity) that global warming ALSO caused extra northerly flow (with below normal temperatures) somewhere else.
And no matter what anyone has told you, global warming cannot cause colder than normal weather. It’s not in the physics. The fact that warming has been greatest in the Arctic means that the equator-to-pole temperature contrast has been reduced, which would mean less storminess and less North-South exchange of air masses — not more.
“”””” Peter Ward says:
April 17, 2012 at 5:04 am
I notice that the graph has a flat line labelled “long term average”. How long is that long term? Does it take account of the LIA, MWP, etc? In short, are we *sure* that the long term average is actually flat? “””””
Absolutely. The long term average is ALWAYS exactly flat; otherwise it is NOT an average.; and also why it is meaningless.
That sentence could very easily have been written by Hansen or Trenberth or Ehrlich or McKibben or Algore or Suzuki (or …). I’d bet money that someone will find a perfect match in Google.
Yeah, except for in the past when GHG’s were much lower and March was hot (and Feb and Jan and Dec …) as Steve Goddard shows everyone daily. Ditto for droughts and floods and hurricanes and tornados (and …).
Yeah! He could be like the David Brooks of climate ‘science’. 🙂
Also realize that the “records” are based on a short (and perhaps conveniently chosen) period of time that begins in 1880 for GIStemp.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/year-without-a-winter/
1877-78 was quite warm with at least one place reporting more ice melt (earlier lake clearing) then, than now.
http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/wint77_78.html
http://lakeminnetonka.patch.com/topics/Hennepin+County+Sheriff%2527s+Office
So we’re running about 10 days longer to ‘ice out’ … which means that this year was colder…
Now one lake does not a winter make… but it is a bit “odd” that this very warm 1877-78 was left out of the ‘start of time’ for all those loverly graphs the AGW Crowd like to make that are SO sensitive to start conditions for making trend lines…
Or, looked at another way, we have a very nice period of about 134 years for a ‘peak to peak’ cycle. Next direction ought to be down, even for the USA (as we catch up to the rest of the world):
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/hide-the-deaths-from-cold-portugal/
You can hide the thermometer records, and you can hide the data diddling, but it’s harder to hide the dead bodies.
Similar deaths in other parts of the world too. Cold kills, summers have much lower deaths. In Portugal, the numbers spike dramatically:
http://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/portugal-deaths.jpg
That is entirely an artifact of the Data Diddling done to the record. With all the places prone to wider volatility bands removed (such as the mountains) and with thermometers clustered at Airports, globally, next to all that lovely tarmac solar collector with snow removal, of COURSE his record shows increases in hot excursions and decreases of cold excursions. That’s the method by which the thermometer selectivity does the work of coloring the data.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/ghcn-the-global-analysis/
Has a load of particulars, from the airport percent going into the 90%+ range to the abandonment of high cold places. California was an interesting example:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/ghcn-california-on-the-beach-who-needs-snow/
But there are plenty more:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/ghcn-south-america-andes-what-andes/
But, just to be sure, they have a “QA” process that tosses out data based on an equal sized band for both hot and cold readings. The problem is that cold readings are more volatile than hot ones (places tend to smoothly ‘top out’ near 100 F to the upside, while downside you can move 50 F in a day – I had that happen in Dallas once…) So they then toss out any ‘outlier’ and replace it with… and average from a set of local AIRPORTS ASOS stations…. where “local” is imaginatively large.
Now the simple act of averaging will dampen excursions. So any remaining cold excursion gets even more suppressed.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/qa-or-tossing-data-you-decide/
The simple fact is that the data are being manicured for effect. Any paper made from it, and especially any one from Hansen, is more an exercise in finger painting than science, IMHO.
When you look at long term individual station data, it’s nice and steady with a bit of periodic roll to it as cycles go by. Many places have a very slight overall cooling trend, in keeping with a couple of thousands year long drift into the next glacial (our warm peak is a bit below the MWP peak, for example, that is itself below the Roman Warm Period peak, that is well below the warmth that caused the Sahara to be green and lush from the hot air dragging rain clouds to the interior).
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/cold-dry-sahara-hot-wet-savanna/
So, sorry to say, that nice little paper you point at is about as useful as the one Nevil Chamberlain held up…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time
and with about as much veracity behind it, IMHO.
Look at a graph of the jet stream. Everywhere it dips south is one of those spots. As I’m under the one in California, I can attest that it’s been here. Very cold and wet for far too long.
We’ve had snow on Mt. Hamilton more than during the prior warm PDO phase. I’ve had folks all up the West Coast into Washington and Oregon with the same story. You’ve already seen a comment about Alaska being colder.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ncep_cfsr_t2m_anom1.png
pretty much shows the pattern. Notice how very cold Alaska is looking.
Now you also need to realize that enthalpy comes into play here too. You can’t just compare temps to temps. Something the AGW folks frequently try to ignore. A few extra feet of snow somewhere, like Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Mt. Hamilton will offset a much larger quantity of dry air in terms of heat capacity which is what really matters, not temperatures.
You also need to allow for the way air gets redistributed around the whole planet, so you can see in that picture a very cold Australia and Siberia too. The warmth that is backing up in North America isn’t making it to those other places fast enough and they are cooling.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/of-locality-of-pov/
Nice picture of the very late season snow on Mt. Hamilton here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/snows-of-mount-hamilton/
BTW, I got ANOTHER picture of snow from just a couple of days ago. Very unusual compared to recent decades (rather more like long ago decades).
But don’t worry, we’re measuring our temperatures near the beach over the airport tarmac so that snow won’t pollute the nice warm data…
But it does point out the other thing you need to remember: Air circulation is 3 dimensional. You can have heating of air via descending air masses with no net addition of heat to the system. Somewhere else air can be rising and cooling in offset, but that cold air happens at altitude, not at the surface.
So please do try not to think so 2 dimensionally… It’s 3-D with Enthalpy, not 2-D Temps only, that matters.
EM Smith,
Certainly enthalpy and heat capacity all are interesting and important (although these have no effect on IR radiation, so in that aspect temperture is still king) . I was specifically addressing temperature because that was the subject of the top post. I used the data set I did because that was the data used in the top post.
The analysis I did shows this March was one of the two most abnormally hot months in the US (along with Sept, 1998). Whatever impacts enthalpy and heat capacity might have, that doesn’t change the temperature records. It would be fun to do the same analysis for enthalpy of surface air in the US, but I doubt that data is available.
PS The method for determining the “ice out” condition for Lake Minnetonka has changed over the years, so comparing anything from pre-1968 is comparing apples to oranges. The stories about 1887-88 in MN were interesting, but rather unexpectedly, the “ice out” date that years was April 25, 1888, which is surprising for such a warm winter.
http://www.freshwater.org/images/stories/PDFs/2011year-by-year.pdf
Tim
E.M.Smith says:
April 17, 2012 at 4:18 pm
That is entirely an artifact of the Data Diddling done to the record. With all the places prone to wider volatility bands removed (such as the mountains) and with thermometers clustered at Airports, globally, next to all that lovely tarmac solar collector with snow removal, of COURSE his record shows increases in hot excursions and decreases of cold excursions. That’s the method by which the thermometer selectivity does the work of coloring the data.
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The top average is the raw data and bottom is from the Foster and Rahmstorf method of removing natural variability.
All records that I am aware of show warming including Roy Spencer’s UAH records.
From about 1980 on as you plug in the different temperature records, they show an increased temp rate per decade. This correlates to me with our increase in co2 emissions. The basics are there.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
GISS land ocean
Trend: 0.059 ±0.007 °C/decade (2σ)
THis starts at 1880 and ends with the last of the GISS temperature record.
noaa record
Trend: 0.061 ±0.007 °C/decade (2σ)
starts at 1880 same ending as above
hadcrut 3
Trend: 0.044 ±0.007 °C/decade (2σ)
starts at 1840 to today
hadcrut 4
Trend: 0.045 ±0.006 °C/decade (2σ)
1840 to todfay
Best land
Trend: 0.059 ±0.009 °C/decade (2σ)
1800 to today
NOAA land
Trend: 0.059 ±0.009 °C/decade (2σ)
1880 to today
Satellite RSS
Trend: 0.137 ±0.076 °C/decade (2σ)
1980 to today
Satellite UAH
Trend: 0.136 ±0.078 °C/decade (2σ)
1980 to today
‘renewable guy’ cites the Skeptical Pseudo-Science [sPs] blog and says, “the weather is on steroids.” Typical alarmist nonsense.
Worldwide observations directly contradict that nonsense. And check the right sidebar: sPs is the only blog that is rated “Unreliable”. Anthony doesn’t do that lightly. If you need evidence that sPs is a Soros funded propaganda blog, do a WUWT archive search. sPs has been completely discredited.
Smokey says:
April 17, 2012 at 8:14 pm
‘renewable guy’ cites the Skeptical Pseudo-Science [sPs] blog and says, “the weather is on steroids.” Typical alarmist nonsense.
Worldwide observations directly contradict that nonsense. And check the right sidebar: sPs is the only blog that is rated “Unreliable”. Anthony doesn’t do that lightly. If you need evidence that sPs is a Soros funded propaganda blog, do a WUWT archive search. sPs has been completely discredited.
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I’m not here because I agree with this site. I ‘m here to present my view of the science. The data.
You can to wood for trees and put in the different long term data and compare. The instrumental record shows warming. This isn’t about sks this is about the data showing what the climate is doing. All the different temperature records show warming. Skeptical Science has also pointed that out.
Smokey says: “If you need evidence that sPs is a Soros funded propaganda blog, do a WUWT archive search.”
Let’s see .. ah Here is what I found.
Or perhaps this is what you meant …
That is the best I could find at WUWT. The rest of the web seems to have pretty much the same — a few random responses in various blogs. Is this REALLY the best support you have for your otherwise unsubstantiated claim – you own admittedly ad hominem musings?
renewable guy says:
“You can to wood for trees and put in the different long term data and compare.”
OK, let’s do that: click
See, the long term temperature trend is steadily declining [green trend line]. It is obvious that there is no accelerated warming, and that global temperatures have steadily declined since the LIA.
But thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.☺
Panic ye not…those of you worried that yesterdays arctic sea ice extent would mean polar bears walking to New York soon….NSIDC has just revised that pesky sea ice data. Phew! It was about to cross the ‘normal’ line…now it isn’t.
Thank heavens for your prompt action NSiDC guys, you are a credit to your profession, I won’t need to buy a rifle to protect myself from bears strolling down 5th Avenue now. And as the USA gets warmer and warmer, bizarrely causing the sea ice to increase, I know NSIDC will be on guard to stop those pesky bears in their tracks….
h/t Bishop Hill & Steve Goddard….
Tim Folkerts
The stated (by Anthony) reasons for SKS’s unreliability are “Due to (1) deletion, extension and amending of user comments, and (2) undated post-publication revisions of article contents after significant user commenting.”
‘Unreliable’ sounds pretty kind to me.
Smokey says: “See, the long term temperature trend is steadily declining [green trend line]. ”
No, the green line is the linear fit. You seem to be comparing it to the two other lines, which are simply lines generated to guide the eye. The other two lines are lines that were arbitrarily rotated and offset from the original trend line. They mean NOTHING.
On the other hand, the green linear fit line tends to be too low at the start, too high in the middle, and too low at the end. This is a classic sign that a quadratic fit would be better, and that the warming IS accelerating during this period.
See, the long term temperature trend is steadily
decliningincreasing. [green trend line] . It is obvious that there isnoindeed> accelerated warming, and that global temperatures have steadilydeclinedincreased at accelerating ratessince the LIA.There — I fixed it for you.
MODERATOR:
DANG — I messed up the formatting. The previous comment should have read:
See, the long term temperature trend is steadily
decliningincreasing. [green trend line] . It is obvious that there isnoindeed accelerated warming, and that global temperatures have steadilydeclinedincreased at accelerating rates since the LIA.[Hopefully this will be right.]
tjfolkerts,
Temperatures are rising at an accelerating rate??
Ri-i-i-i-ght.
On your planet, maybe.
I’m sorry but I have to question any document/graph/chart/model/whatever that describes California as “Near Normal”. I mean, maybe if you exclude LA and SF but then, what would you have left? 🙂
“”””” Dr. Martin Hoerling on NOAA says much the same thing, attributing much to “randomness” and citing a similar event in March 1910 as seen below in the NCDC data plot: “””””
So we have an “experimental observation” occupying the last 110 years, from which some “valuable” numbers like trend rates and averages and the like have been computed. (well you can compute those things for any 110 years of totally arbitrary collected numbers too).
So to find out if any of those numbers; trends and averages are meaningful, then we should repeat the observations many times. We don’t have time to wait for any future 110 year long periods, so we will have to use some past periods.
Has anybody ever done any statistics covering say the last 1,000 periods of 110 year data to see if there is much variation from this latest result. Then we would have some idea whether there is any significance to the last 110 years of observations.
Smokey says:
April 17, 2012 at 9:10 pm
renewable guy says:
“You can to wood for trees and put in the different long term data and compare.”
OK, let’s do that: click
See, the long term temperature trend is steadily declining [green trend line]. It is obvious that there is no accelerated warming, and that global temperatures have steadily declined since the LIA.
But thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.☺
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Hadcrut 3 has cooling bias and yet shows warming. Sorry Smokey I disagree with you, that green line is increasing.
hadcrit 3 which is biased cool due to poor global coverage shows warming
1840 to aprox 2010
Trend: 0.44 ±0.07 °C/century (2σ)
There is now a Hadcrut 4 which takes into better account areas of the earth not covered previously in the norther hemisphere
Trend: 0.45 ±0.06 °C/century (2σ)
hadcrut 3 1980 to 2012
Trend: 1.49 ±0.50 °C/century (2σ)
hadcrut 4 1980 to 2012
Trend: 1.72 ±0.49 °C/century (2σ)
Both temperature records show an acceleration of warming in the last 30 years.
This is a clear example of how evidence supports global warming.
Here is a video of experts about the March weather and discussion around global warming.
renewable guy,
The trend line is declining, not accelerating as you claim. Hadcrit [sic] is unreliable. Satellite temperatures are reliable. And yes, global temperatures have been rising naturally since the LIA, whether CO2 was 280 ppmv, or 390 ppmv. The rise in CO2 has not caused the trend line to accelerate. What does that tell you?
I referred to the long term trend line since the LIA. Any short term selections are cherry-picking. The planet has been warming along the same trend line since the LIA, with the same fluctuations. If you have any understanding of the null hypothesis, then you know it falsifies the alternative hypothesis of temperatures accelerating beyond their normal, long term parameters. That is not happening.
Given the choice between empirical evidence, and true belief based on “adjusted” temperatures, I will accept what the planet is saying. You can believe what you want. But keep in mind that there are $7 – $8 billion in federal grants handed out every year to ‘study climate change’. That money does not go to scientists who point out that nothing unusual is occurring.
Smokey says:
April 18, 2012 at 12:10 pm
renewable guy,
The trend line is declining, not accelerating as you claim. Hadcrit [sic] is unreliable. Satellite temperatures are reliable. And yes, global temperatures have been rising naturally since the LIA, whether CO2 was 280 ppmv, or 390 ppmv. The rise in CO2 has not caused the trend line to accelerate. What does that tell you?
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That is also magic wand thinking without having to explain how LIA came about and why we came out of the LIA. I’m not going to go into that right now. The earth in the past increased or decreased in temperature due to the different forcings. If you haven’t included that in your conversation, you are leaving a huge hole.
I would like to stick to the topic at hand. Here is another video with experts telling how the weather dynamics have changed due to melting polar ice. A great deal of it involves the jet stream.
Smokey says
Given the choice between empirical evidence, and true belief based on “adjusted” temperatures, I will accept what the planet is saying. You can believe what you want. But keep in mind that there are $7 – $8 billion in federal grants handed out every year to ‘study climate change’. That money does not go to scientists who point out that nothing unusual is occurring.
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You forgot to mention the one hurdle your view has to cross is peer review. If peer reviewed evidence can show that co2 is not causing the warming but something else is and why. That is a huge hurdle in terms of evidence. The carbon burning industry would love to have that kind of evidence be found and proven true. Can you talk about this?
Smokey, I gotta laugh when you say “Any short term selections are cherry-picking” after presenting cherry-picked short-term data (and throwing in a bait-and-switch to boot!).
Smokey, the graph YOU originally posted and discussed covers ~150 years — a good amount of time for climate studies.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1840/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:0.15/detrend:-0.16/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:-0.4/detrend:-0.18/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:1.5/plot/hadcrut3vnh/scale:0.00001/offset:-1.5
Do you seriously still claim that YOUR graph shows “It is obvious that there is no accelerated warming, and that global temperatures have steadily declined since the LIA.” My goodness! If temperatures declined since the LIA, it would be COLDER now than during the LIA!
Then you pull try pulling a “bait and switch”, posting a NEW graph which shows a short-term decline for about 2 years (which by your own words is “cherry-picking”). Yes, you can find numerous short-term declines over the last 150 years. Yes, it is even possible that this is indeed the start of a long-term downward cycle. But the short-term decline in no way refutes the general accelerated increase in temperature over the last ~ 150 years. Try doing a quadratic fit to the long-term data — I guarantee both the linear and quadratic terms will be positive (ie the data is increasing and accelerating).
Tim Folkerts,
As always, thank you for your opinion. It conflicts with the real world, but at least you can post it here. Note that I have posted many, many graphs and citations, including the chart you are complaining about — which overlaps the Ryan Maue chart that goes right up to today. Both show declines in global temperature. If there was accelerated warming, the charts would be rising, not falling. But you have your opinion. [BTW, thank you for pointing out my error. It was a mistake, which happens occasionally. Global temperatures have of course naturally risen since the LIA.]
. . .
renewable guy says:
“You forgot to mention the one hurdle your view has to cross is peer review.”
Nonsense. You still have no understanding of the scientific method. I am not making the CO2=CAGW conjecture. I am a true scientific skeptic: those putting forth that conjecture have the onus of showing that the evidence supports it. But they have failed to provide verifiable evidence supporting their conjecture.
Peer reviewed ‘evidence’ is not evidence at all, and the belief that global temperatures are controlled by a “CO2 control knob” [as chartered Team member A. Lacis claims] has zero testable evidence to support it. If there was any such evidence, then the climate sensitivity number would be known. It is not. Among many reputable climatologists, the number varies from zero to over 1ºC [discounting the IPCC’s preposterous WAG of 3+ºC].
Peer review simply means that someone has supposedly looked over a paper and found no glaring errors. But in climate it is pal review, as the repeatedly deconstructed Shakun et al. paper shows. So, enough with your appeals to a corrupt authority. There is better peer review here than at most journals, and that’s a fact. Read A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, available on the right sidebar. It will open your eyes to the underhanded shenanigans endemic to climate peer review and climate journals.
Finally, your statement: “If peer reviewed evidence can show that co2 is not causing the warming but something else is and why” is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of anything besides CO2 that could cause global warming, then it must be caused by CO2.” That evidence-free fallacy is used by the alarmist crowd all the time. It presumes that everything is known about the climate. But as I showed upthread, there is no change in the long term trend from the LIA, therefore any warming caused by CO2 is so small that it is unmeasurable, if it exists at all.
You folks always make your arguments based on emotion, not logic; you do not understand the null hypothesis, you disregard Occam’s Razor, and you have the scientific method backward. Stick around here for a while, read the articles and comments, and just maybe, the scales will fall from your eyes.