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).
“a few decades ago”
2012 and 1942 means to Mr. Goklany a few decades ago. To me ‘a few’ means more than one, but certainly not more than five.
In the 70s and 80s it was cool in the forests and countryside during hot summerdays, but these days it’s just as warm and humid in forests as it is in towns and cities. At least in my country. There is no way to escape the heat anymore during hot summers. Why do you think the resulting thunderstorms have become so violent? It’s a strange thing that these violent thunderstorms do not form over cities, but over the “cooler” countryside.
Mr. Goklany: If the countryside was much cooler the thunderstorms would be milder in nature, but unfortunately they are not.
But OK let’s blame it on the UHI for that 2° temperature increase. In 70 years from now the increase may be 4-6° to 2012. Surely resulting in more violent thunderstorms. Are you then going to show us pictures about the situation in 2082 comparing it with 2012 too and blame it on the newly invented term ‘enhanced urban heat island effect’ (EUHI)?
And what about the situation in 2150 when temperatures are hotter if we go on with business as usual and superviolent thunderstorms have become the norm? Yet another new term: The ‘super enhanced urban heat island effect’ (SEUHI).
About the Met Office here in the UK and their longer range forecasts. Do you folk know nothing of statistics and probability. Daily Mail journalists all of you? The Met Office offers probabilities of weather outcomes for the season ahead, based on seasonal records going back over centuries here in the UK. Bit like betting in many ways. When the fave for a race is stuffed by a hundred to one outsider it doesn’t happen very often. Twice in the last fifty years at the Grand National. So they say there’s an eighty percent chance of dry but there’s still a twenty percent chance of wet. Get over yourselves. Think about science and maths. I know there’s a problem with the Met Office for some of you folk here because it’s state owned. Would the RAF, The Navy, The British Army, British Airways and many others use it’s service if it was such a bunch of crap?
Shocking, I say. Shocking. Back in the ’30s summer heatwaves (especially 1934), temps in downtown DC were well into the 100s, but they knew even then not to use those sites for records because they were obviously UHIE contaminated.
Er, fourth paragraph, it is still 104 C.
[REPLY: Missed that one. Fixed. -REP]
BTW, it was 97F here in rural western MD. About the avg annual high for a typical summer. Next day (yesterday) the high was a comfortable 88F. The state heat record is in nearby Cumberland in 1934 at an amazing 109F. The same day in ’34 saw records of 110F+ in PA & WV.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
When Drudge has six stories on storms and record heat, I would expect to see similar coverage on WUWT. If it’s offset by record cold, that’s also news. The issue here is not ideology or cause, but simple newsworthiness.
Even if it is the hottest in 142 years, is there something special about the last 142 years or even the last 1,420 years that makes it unusual over a geologically significant time scale?
Let’s see.. If we have 200 years of acccurate temps for DC and the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old then, with .000004 % of the temperature data in hand and the rest unknown, we can use the term hottest ever, how?
We must remember that congress is in session. So that accounts for at least an extra two degrees of hot air.
“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.”
Yes, Everyday I leave town on a calm sunny day the temp drops about 4 F, as I pass the airport, the temp is always higher, then further from the heat island it is cooler. As soon as I leave the freeway another 4 F drop. I have observed any where up to 10 F drop in temp from town to home. The first 4 deg F are just outside the urban sprawl.
My point is the drama the news folks create regarding temperature readings, Extremism sells print.
Use a coin toss as a model for climate and weather. If you throw a lot of tails in a row it is cold, and a lot of heads in a row is hot. Most of the time, temperatures will be about average.
However, if you toss the coin long enough eventually you will toss 3 heads in a row. And if you continue to toss, eventually you will toss 4 heads in a row. And if you toss long enough you will toss 5 heads in a row. And if you continue to toss, you will eventually break this record as well. Over time every record hot and cold spell will be broken by a new record.
Question: is the coin (climate/weather) changing, so that it created more “record temperatures” when you toss? If the coin (climate/weather) isn’t changing, then how come you set new records the longer you toss the coin?
… and people were boiling their potatoes in the streets as mandated by law to conserve electricity when temperatures surpass 100 C as noted in paragraph three…104 C… 🙂
(its a cruel world)
[REPLY: Sorry, missed that one. Fixed. Thanks. -REP]
What?
Robbie says:
July 1, 2012 at 5:07 am
“In 70 years from now the increase may be 4-6° to 2012. Surely resulting in more violent thunderstorms. Are you then going to show us pictures about the situation in 2082 comparing it with 2012 too and blame it on the newly invented term ‘enhanced urban heat island effect’ (EUHI)?”
I think you left out the /sarc.
Or at least it SOUNDS like you did. In 70 years from now, a lot of things ‘may’ happen. You might even be clarvoyant by then. But I don’t think so. UHI wins, no matter how many sarcastic prefixes you add to the original abbreviation.
What the AGW faithful do not understand is that setting record temps is an accounting issue, and nothing to do with the temperature getting hotter. Even assuming the 140 year record history, that is no were near enough time to fill in all possible slots of temps. On the first day that temperature records are started, every day is a record breaking day, then as the years pass, those number of record breaking days drops off in a decay curve. Thus if you look at the number of record breaking days and count them for each year, you will find the bulk of them are in the beginning of the 1900’s. And it would take more than 3000 years to finally get to the point of no more record breaking days. For example, if the possible range of temps on July 1 at any given location is between 20 and 40C, and we measure in 1/10’s of a degree, then that is 200 possible slots. Times 365 days and the number of possible record breaking days to fill in is enormous, thousands of years to fill them all in, without an increasing temperature.
Keith Pearson, formerly bikermailman, Anonymous no longer says:
July 1, 2012 at 4:11 am
Also remember that historically, that area was a tidal swamp. Most of which has been filled in, creating more land use changes.
They didn’t fill it in enough — the place still attracts the bottom feeders…
Back in the 80s or early 90s, don’t remember exactly which year, it was over 100 deg F in Columbia, SC for 26 straight days. We are talking 70% + RH so it was indeed miserable.
An important point to keep in mind: monthly averaged data generally undergoes the “adjustment” process that allegedly removes urban effects etc. (probably not all that effective, really) but daily data don’t receive this treatment. So looking at record braking dailies will inevitably mislead you, especially because of urbanization.
[Jim R says:
July 1, 2012 at 5:19 am]
[“Would the RAF, The Navy, The British Army, British Airways and many others use it’s service if it was such a bunch of crap?”]
Jim, there is a world of difference between the ‘weather’ forecasting talents of the hundreds of (generally) good forecasters who work for the Met Office around the UK issuing forecasts on a daily basis to the services you quoted, and the complete buffoons who try to issue ‘climate scare’ predictions based on complex computer models fed rubbish data by people who have a vested interest in continuing a totally unjustified belief that a minor trace gas can cause a significant change in the Earth’s climate!
I have been listening to the genuine forecasters for over thirty years. Some are good and some are not so good. It would not be a lie to say that the “RAF, [Royal] Navy and British Army” etc take note of the forecasts but do not assume they are 100% correct. Many years ago (80s?), there was an excellent cartoon by ‘Tugg’ (bless him) – a brilliant cartoonist who specialised in Royal Navy Flight Safety cartoons – who portrayed a Squadron briefing room on board a ship where the Met Officer was giving a met briefing dressed in shorts, sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt and, unseen behind him, the Commander Air was walking into the room covered in snow with a scowl on his face! It appears that Tugg was more than a little prescient about the state of ‘climate forecasting’ in the Met Office! 🙂
I am pretty sure that many, if not most, meteorologists working for the Met Office cringe with embarrassment when they read the climate predictions issued in their name…
Assuming there is no foul play with the data coming from Virginia, (????- Mann???)
looking carefully at all the data from the weather station at Reagan airport, I note it follows closely those of NY Kennedy airport.
For the results of New York, see
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Note that there is a sharp warming trend evident there over the past 12 years.
I should hasten to tell you that this warming is local and probably only applies to some parts of the west coast of the USA and Norway. Global cooling is still happening and it is still very real.
It seems to me that due to the fall in global temperatures, parts of the world are just getting some benefit of more clouds and more condensing water vapor, trapping some heat. Perhaps some more warmer on-shore wind may also be caused by the colder sun. There could be other factors causing some local warming due to a cooling earth.
However, these countries must not think they are safe from the cold that is coming.
Average temps. in Washington DC Reagan airport have actually started falling slightly since 2005 (looking only at all the data for the period 2005-2011, compared to the average for the same period 2005-2011).
Earth’s energy store is still very big, but eventually we are going to play catch up with falling maximum temperatures.
Average temps. in Washington DC Reagan airport have actually started falling slightly since 2005 (looking only at all the data for the period 2005-2011, compared to the average for the same period 2005-2011).
Sorry, that should read:
Average temps. in Washington DC Reagan airport have actually started falling slightly since 2005 (looking only at all the data for the period 2006-2011, compared to the average for the same period 2006-2011).
@ur momisugly Jimbo
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.
Stay tuned, Jimbo. The Met usually take a week to get their numbers together. I’ll be knocking up a post then.
If the EPA can lower the temperature of the globe then cooling down an airport shouldn’t be a problem. EPA documentation accompanying proposed greenhouse gas emission regulations states that it’s regulations will reduce the average global temperature by ’0.006 to 0.0015C by 2100.’ The mathematical precison of the government science authoritarians of global warming is astounding! We should insist on this kind of precision in economics–e.g., dead and dying Old Europe will go bellyup in 104 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes and 7 seconds.
“Sal Minella says:
July 1, 2012 at 6:19 am
Let’s see.. If we have 200 years of acccurate temps for DC and the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old then, with .000004 % of the temperature data in hand and the rest unknown, we can use the term hottest ever, how?”
Even if you only take the 6000 years during which civilization has flourished, you get a very insignificant 3.3%.