Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
On June 29th, the temperature at Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Washington, DC, hit 104 °F and it was duly noted by all and sundry that this was the hottest June day EVAH. Typical was the Washington Post story:
D.C. shatters all-time June record high, sizzles to 104
Mark Richards, weather observer at Reagan National Airport, says the temperature at 2:48 p.m. hit 104, blowing by the old June record of 102 set on June 9 in both 1874 and 2011. We are now experiencing D.C.’s hottest June temperatures in 142 years.
Indeed, 104 °F was the highest temperature ever measured in June in the vicinity of Reagan National Airport. But was it the warmest day in Washington, DC, ever?
This is what Reagan National Airport looks like in the present.
Figure 1: Photograph from 2011. At left foreground is the Jefferson Monument. Behind it on the other side of the river, with the plane hovering over it is Reagan National Airport. Note the development, Crystal City, on the right hand side, also on the other side of the river.
But here is a photograph that shows us what this area look like a few decades ago.
Figure 2: This picture, taken in 1942, shows the Jefferson Monument under construction. There is no Crystal City on the right, nor is there any Reagan National Airport. In fact, as one can see, that area was still being filled in. In the 19th century, the area occupied by the Memorial and adjacent land was also water, since much of this is also filled-in land.
Clearly, comparing temperature readings taken in 2012 at Reagan National against those taken over past decades at the same location is not an apples-to-apples comparison. That is, the data are not homogeneous. And whether the claim that June 29th, 2012 was the warmest Washington June day in 142 years is correct (or not), that claim cannot be supported by merely looking at the temperature readings at the airport.
The two degree difference between the previous record reading and the June 29th one may well be due to both the urban heat island effect and the “airport heat island effect,” a much understudied phenomenon (despite the fact that anyone who has stepped on asphalt in the middle of summer knows that the only thing worse is walking on coals).
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104°C? That’s hotter than the Sahara!
Surely it’s F, not C?
[REPLY: Fixed. Thanks. -REP]
Just remember while the AGW crowd will be bleating about the hottest year EVAH in the USA ask them about the record temperatures and drought in the UK as predicted by the Met office. They will be oddly silent.
In the UK we have been suffering torrential rain and storms and the period April to June has been one of the worst on record,
BBC report 29 June 2012
“Rainy weather breaks UK record for three months to June
April to June this year has been the wettest second quarter in the UK since records began in 1910.”
Yet the Met Office forecast for the periods seems out of line with reality.
Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: May – July 2012 Issue date: 26.04.12
The forecast presented here is for May and the average of the May-June-July period for the United Kingdom as a whole. This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement. [My sarc “Expert Judgement?” ]
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
For UK-average rainfall, the predicted probabilities slightly favour above-normal values during both May and May-June-July. However, confidence in this prediction is not high, and there is still a significant probability of below-normal rainfall. Whilst the wet weather of recent weeks will have had a positive effect on soil moisture, with all that that implies for agriculture, it is unlikely to have had a significant impact on groundwater supplies. With the forecast for May and May-June-July not favouring a continuation of the current very wet spell, groundwater resources in southern, eastern and central England are very unlikely to recover during this period.
The probability that UK-average rainfall for May-June-July will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 15%, whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is around 30% (the 1971-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
Remember the March forecast:
Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: April – June 2012 Issue date: 23.03.12
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months.
…….The probability that UK precipitation for April-May-June will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25%
And they say they need more money for a new computer?
“The Met Office needs new powerful computers to deliver extreme weather warnings, more accurate long-term forecasts and improved climate modelling, according to Parliament’s science and technology committee.” – The Guardian, that well known unbiased [sarc] reporter of climate change.
104C? You sure about that?
[REPLY: Fixed. Thanks. -REP]
Didn’t you see the steam rising off the river? 🙂
Typo???
“Indeed, 104 °C…..”
The linked to story does not mention 104 °C but 104
[REPLY: Obviously. Got it fixed, thanks. -REP]
@Adrian Clarkson, you have got it all wrong. Thwe very fact that the UK has had exceptionally wet weather, whilst Washington has had record high temperatures is simply proof positive that climatic extremes are on the increase, caused by increased CO2 (sarc).
Thanks Adrian Kerton. Now that June is over WUWT might want to re-visit the Met Office original forecast. This is one for the weather not climate fail files.
104 C is above boiling point of water. Methinks something is wrong!
[REPLY: Well, he did say “…it was duly noted by all and sundry that this was the hottest June day EVAH…”It’s fixed! It’s fixed! -REP]
Looks to me like the temperature was more likely 102F. Looking at some locations surrounding Washington DC that haven’t really changed much over the past 50 years, all of those locations report 102F for that day. These are locations to the east, west, and north of DC.
Great Falls, VA, Frederick, MD, and Chestertown MD all report 102F.
Also, Upper Marlboro, MD which is basically straight East out of DC on Pennsylvania Ave was also 102F that day. So judging from the various locations around Washington all being 102F that day, I will go out on a limb and say DC was probably seeing 2 degrees of UHI.
I’m sittin on my Big Tractor today playing with my new IT Gadget and the mobile internet:
“urban heat island effect and the “airport heat island effect,” ” Yes … now THAT is a kind of Manmade Global warming I can / could / do agree with: MAN _ MADE Politics interfering in our Agriculture = Carrot n Stick Politics – no longer mixed Agriculture – large scale ‘monoculture’ large areas of a particular crop at certain / the same time of year, = large areas with the same absorptive / reflective indices etc….fieldwater run-off, water absorption / CO2 release at night, etc etc ( leave that all for the good Botanists to elaborate upon..) ……. suffice to say , I have been in the fields long enough to tell the difference between patchwork smallish fields and large scale ( tho’ not Praire scale) to see the difference…….. Mid-morning Convective currents from low-wind weather causing us the grief whilst crop-spraying etc., Then the Lunchtime High winds and the similar early evening High winds following the daily Heating cycles from the hills around us too – Like the Tides…………. BUT! 🙂 we live where we work and see all this all the time – wot can we do about Nature – ’tis the Townee Scientists who tell us its AGW etc and Tax us something stupid to counter the effects….. Same old story… Spend more money to solve the problem ….Eh? Throughing money at anything never solved the problem. The little Dutch Boy just stuck his finger IN it ( probably never even occurred to him that he should have stuffed £ notes in the hole……. an’ how long would the paper have lasted ? DON’t even THINK about saying it would have “bought” = given him time to go and get help to stem the flow…. Dat’s wot I got a new4n 4 …….. – F the cld decy4 txt *%^&” datz Y the water condenses out of warm air: more trees around here and OSR too adding to Pollen levels – too late for the OSR Pollen now but Hey! its maybe the Barley Pollen – an awful lot of Cereals have come on very quickly despite the awful spring we’ve had – may be an early harvest after all..
Mus Shift – am parked in the way!
The comment about the UK forecast, April, May, June, by the UKMet. Office has been reported by Christopher Booker in today’s Sunday Telegraph. The forecast was 180 degrees wrong. Yet the computer models used for this disastrous result were the same as those used to forecast the climate/weather 100years hence and used by the IPCC. So what faith do we have in their cataclysmic scenarios of future climate change.
Every time I drive past London Heathrow Airport, on the various local roads which get within a couple of hundred yards of the runways, my car’s external temperature reading goes up noticeably. Typically +2 deg C, sometimes as much as +4 deg C.
The preponderance of airport sited temperature records is the main reason for any statistical increase in “global” temperatures. Oh, and fiddling the present upwards, and the past downwards, and reducing the numbers of high latitude locations, etc etc…
Or the coldest day in Melbourne in 17 yeas. But then, Australia now has a carbon tax, so there is a reason for the sudden cooling
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbourne-cracking-a-coldie/21999
Words such as “record” and “hottest” mean so little. The highest heat I have experienced in my part of Oz was in late summer 2004 (this was on the heels of the Big Heat in Europe in ’03). The worst heat, however, was when inland north westerlies combined with summer heat in the early 1980s and around the year 2000. This lethal pattern was first reported by very reliable naval officers in Sydney – in the summer of 1791-1792! Their description and temp readings would indicate that the Big Heat of that summer was worse than anything I have experienced. There were mass wildlife deaths, with parrots and bats dropping dead from the air. It is factors such as wind direction and how long the heat is sustained that matter, as much as a temp reading. Mind you, those 1791-2 temps were very high. (To further amaze, the most recent and best known editor of the journals which relate these weather events is…Tim Flannery! No joke!)
For what it’s worth, the coolest summer I ever experienced in my 63 years was the one just past. Which proves absolutely nothing.
What? Hot? 104 Kelvin? You call that HOT?????
– MJM
“104°C? That’s hotter than the Sahara!”
It was just a prophetic slip of the tongue. That’s not the temperature at the location of where the politicians are right now – it’s the one at the location were most of them are are going to be later.
( Not fixed from what I’m seeing BTW. “Indeed, 104 °C was the highest temperature…”)
[REPLY: Drats! There were two of them! Fixed NOW. -REP]
Add to that what you don’t see. Across the river is now Bolling Airforce Base and Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant, Naval Research Lab, and Southeast DC. Just beyond Crystal City is Alexandria and the Capitol Beltway. The road in the foreground is 395 (site of the infamous Florida Air 90 crash) which is a major commuter artery as is the GW parkway which runs next to the airport. In essence, the airport is in the middle of a city as opposed to the edge. In addition it sits on (in) the Potomac River which has to bias the temps just by the effect of the water. Snowfall is often measured as smaller than that reported in other nearby sites for example.
Speaking of airports now even the FAA is foisting emission reduction bunk on us. This is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen from the FAA; enough even to make me afraid to fly… Ya’ll be careful up there! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfhh9xRauHk
Why not require airliners to keep their landing gear and flaps up until the last possible moment? That will save a LOT more emissions on approach than this idea.
http://www.faa.gov/NextGen/
“[REPLY: Well, he did say “…it was duly noted by all and sundry that this was the hottest June day EVAH…”It’s fixed! It’s fixed! -REP]”
No, the third paragraph has not yet been fixed.
[REPLY: It is now. Thanks. -REP]
.Never mind being barefoot on asphalt. Simply walk across a parking lot, then walk across a park. Then come back and tell me there’s only a .1 Degree UHI. Do it when it’s dark, tell me it’s not affecting nighttime temps. For that matter, even where there’s no concrete or asphalt, temps can vary with the presence of, or lack of, grass. Much of DC, and many urban areas, are let’s say…lacking in grass on their soil. There’s quite a difference in air temps depending on presence of grass, or hard packed dirt.
Interesting picture of DC. Also remember that historically, that area was a tidal swamp. Most of which has been filled in, creating more land use changes.
Hey, it still says “Indeed, 104 degrees C”.
Check all your data, not just some of it.
[REPLY: Yeah. Thanks. Fixed. -REP]
WHat a wasted analysis. When a record is broken it is obvious it is due to global warming that too man-made. Keep these fossil fueled analyses to yourself. /sarc