A picture is worth a thousand words:
It isn’t global.
This is weather, not climate. It is caused by a persistent blocking high pressure pattern. In a day or two, that red splotch over the eastern USA will be gone.
Image from Dr. Ryan N. Maue of WeatherBELL
h/t to Joe Bastardi
UPDATE: Dr. Roy Spencer puts it in perspective
June 2012 U.S. Temperatures: Not That Remarkable
July 6th, 2012
I know that many journalists who lived through the recent heat wave in the East think the event somehow validates global warming theory, but I’m sorry: It’s summer. Heat waves happen. Sure, many high temperature records were broken, but records are always being broken.
And the strong thunderstorms that caused widespread power outages? Ditto.
Regarding the “thousands” of broken records, there are not that many high-quality weather observing stations that (1) operated since the record warm years in the 1930s, and (2) have not been influenced by urban heat island effects, so it’s not at all obvious that the heat wave was unprecedented. Even if it was the worst in the last century for the Eastern U.S. (before which we can’t really say anything), there is no way to know if it was mostly human-caused or natural, anyway.
“But, Roy, the heat wave is consistent with climate model predictions!”. Yeah, well, it’s also consistent with natural weather variability. So, take your pick.
For the whole U.S. in June, average temperatures were not that remarkable. Here are the last 40 years from my population-adjusted surface temperature dataset, and NOAA’s USHCN (v2) dataset (both based upon 5 deg lat/lon grid averages; click for large version):
Certainly the U.S drought conditions cannot compare to the 1930s.
I really tire of the media frenzy which occurs when disaster strikes…I’ve stopped answering media inquiries. Mother Nature is dangerous, folks. And with the internet and cell phones, now every time there is a severe weather event, everyone in the world knows about it within the hour. In the 1800s, it might be months before one part of the country found out about disaster in another part of the country. Sheesh.
from comment above
Given that the human species thrived at temperatures less than that in the MWP and RWP, I am not particularly concerned (optimistic in fact).
Should have course read that we thrived in temperatures MORE than that…
Jesse Fell,
Could you please explain to me how the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, managed to take the GJOA , a 70 Ft, wood, cutter rigged sloop, herring trawler, around the North West passage. He did this from 1903 to 1907. He did not have good charts, no GPS, no satellite photos, the compass pointed down making it useless, etc. Did he and his crew of 6 drag the boat across the ice all that distance?
otsar, He took three years to get through the Northwest Passage — he was locked in ice each of the three winters, and even in summer he was unable simply to sail through – he certainly would have taken advantage of ice-free summers if they had existed, knowing what was waiting for him in the winter. He got through because he was a great explorer, of heroic stature. It doesn’t take a hero to get through the Northwest Passage any more — at least in summer.
Jesse,
Frobisher could only find the #$&etc ice by going there. We now know where it is or isn`t and just happen to have been observing synoptically during a period of Arctic ice decline. Maps from the 1930s suggest ice extent almost, as low as at present. Just because we can monitor with more detail and immediacy does not mean what we are seeing is unique.
Eric, OK, so when was the first time that a ship not equipped with a re-inforced ice breaking prow was able to sail through the northwest passage? And why, all of a sudden, are mineral rights to the Arctic Sea a bone of contention among the nations bordering that sea — could it be that the sea has now, as it was not before, navigable to an extent that drilling has become possible?
Jesse,
There are explanations of cycles. Start with Milankovitch and solar variability, then mix in the ocean oscillations. Far more likely to eventually explain observations than just CO2.
Eric, The Milankovic cycle appears to control the coming and going of the ice ages; if it in fact does, we aren’t due for another one for thousands of years. So the Milankovic cycle really has nothing to do with the changes that we are seeing now. There is an 11 year cycle of solar activity, but this doesn’t help explain the rise in the Earth’s temperatures that started to become anomalously large around 35 or 40 years ago, and has proceeded to do so with any variations bearing the stamp of a cycle. There are other cycles, too, but none of the size and shape to fit what we are seeing now.
RE: KR: (July 8, 2012 at 10:30 am)
“Peak oil, perhaps. Peak coal? Peak shale gas? Peak natural gas? No, false again, there’s plenty of carbon we appear ready to burn.”
The point remains that we have run through all the Earths easily available petroleum in less than a hundred years. We wont run out of carbon tomorrow, but if we do not find a safe sustainable method for the large-scale burning of atomic nuclei, (Nuclear Power) your children or grandchildren *are* going to be faced with living in a world with much less energy then we have now. Note that estimates the availability of many of these alternative fuels are usually based on their current rates of usage–not the accelerated usage that would occur after petroleum becomes prohibitively expensive to recover.
We might end up having to give away natural resources just to service the interest on the national debt if that cannot be collected by taxation.
KR says:
July 8, 2012 at 10:30 am
We’re currently at ~0.8 C above where we would be without anthropogenic warming. At 0.16 C/decade, the current rate of increase, we’ll see another degree C in under 65 years, not 200.
Even if I accepted all of the above (which I do not), then it would take another 75 years to reach the 2 C increase. As well, the 2 C was more or less taken out of a hat with no proof it would be a disaster. Don’t you think we have more urgent things to worry about other than what may or may not happen in 75 years from now?
Jesse Fell says:
July 8, 2012 at 10:23 am
… the AGW thesis has reached a high degree of plausibility. We are adding millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year; it is within the scope of a high school science fair project to show that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation, becomes warmer as a result, and itself emits more and more infrared radiation as it becomes warmer. It emits infrared in all directions, one of those directions being down. This is why the surface of the Earth becomes has to become warmer and warmer until it is able to return roughly as much heat energy to outer space as it is receiving from the sun — as it eventually will.
====================================================
Of course it seems plausible. It is a very old plausible hypothesis, like 150 years old, but what a lot of people do not know is that this concept was debunked experimentally by American physics professor R.W.Wood in 1909: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html .
Second, even without the Wood’s experiment, the AGW concept loses plausibility very fast if you start thinking critically. According to that concept, the -18 degrees Celsius cold Earth surface produces so much IR radiation, that the “greenhouse gases” are able to warm the surface by 33 degrees Celsius just by sending back a small part of that IR. Now, you possibly know, that an IR camera can see very well through the air, so the most IR radiation passes safely the “greenhouse gases” trap. Now, you can see the potential of maybe hundreds degrees warming from that second part of IR! You should be able to heat your apartment just by putting some things out of your freezer around! Or just open the freezer and you have an IR heating device! Now you can see how absurd the AGW concept is.
Jesse, that’s a false statement. A cycle is merely a repeating event, regardless of cause. Your idea of “unrelated series of events that coincidentally have the same effect” is merely a spin on a cycle of currently-unknown cause. Do you presume that each El Nino event has a different origin, and that each is unrelated to the previous.
The ancients knew about tides, but not about gravity and the moon’s influence. That did not make the cycles of the tides a coincidence, or simply an unrelated series of events. However, we ARE learning about the cycles of hot and cold, though we may not yet be able explain their causes.
We geologists look at the long history of the Earth’s climate and see many changes: some cyclic, some catastrophic. None, unless there were ancient fossil-fuel-based civilizations of which we are unaware, were caused by human (or nonhuman) intervention. With the full knowledge that these changes occur naturally, you now stand and claim that CO2 is the cause of all of them.
Does it not seem logical that the burden of proof is on you to prove it? If you admit that natural cycles might be the result of “unrelated series of events,” how do you prove that your increased CO2 is not just another “unrelated event” to this temperature cycle?
Admunsen didn’t have GPS, nor satellite photos. Basically, he didn’t know the path through the ice. But surely you knew that, so why are you acting like navigating the Arctic in 1903 is the same as navigating it a century later?
Jesse,
Seabed mineral rights have only become an issue in the late 20th century, so earlier ice free periods , when fewer people lived at higher latitudes to know about them anyway, would not have been important.
Jesse Fell,
You ignore my 12:10 pm comment above to post your appeals to authority and a ‘talk-talk story’ that has no way to verify it. Excuse me while I disregard that nonsense.
As I posted above, glaciers have been receding since the LIA. What is so unexpected about that?? You don’t say.
Your comments amount to emotional hand-waving. If you want credibility, post something verifiable, instead of folklore passed down by Indians – which disregards your own comment that hydroelectric power has changed the situation over the past few generations. Damming rivers has more of an effect on local tribes than receding glaciers.
You say above: “…the rise in the Earth’s temperatures that started to become anomalously large around 35 or 40 years ago…”
Absolute debunked nonsense.
Otter says:
July 8, 2012 at 7:55 am
—————————————
Otter, Paul K2 has gone AWOL so I did a little digging. Seems as though Arctic sea ice was pretty constant up until 1950s – 1960s before heading into its “death spiral”. This means the US suffered from the great drought of the 1930s without the benefit of Arctic sea ice loss, meaning in turn this theory about weather sticking is crap. But better than that, the refutation is brought to you by an alarmist web-site that takes a swipe at Richard Linzden before he proves our point.
http://eco101.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/arctic-ice-melt-in-the-1930s-another-denier-argument-debunked/
Jesse
Technically the death zone is above 7,900m , the height of South Col on Everest. Since the highest peak in the Andes is Aconcagua at 6,959m spending time in that zone in the Andes would be difficult.
Glaciers have been in retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age, no change there then. Rates of those measured since the 19th century eg Gangotri in the Himalayas, show steady retreat throughout the period. GRACE satellite measurements suggest little or no loss of ice mass in the Himalayas, while the Andes do show continued ablation.
Jesse,
What is anomalous about the past 30 – 40 years? The rate of temperature change in the 1930s and the 1940s are the same rate as the 1980s and early 1990s. Just natural changes as as result of the interactions between the natural cycles of different periodicities.
Eric Huxter says:
“What is anomalous about the past 30 – 40 years? The rate of temperature change in the 1930s and the 1940s are the same rate as the 1980s and early 1990s.”
Exactly right.
Anomalously large is completely incorrect. Look at this temperature reconstruction from the Greenland GISP2 ice cores: GISP2 Ice Core graphic.
Even the skepticalscience.com website does not dispute its accuracy, though it claims that since it’s from a Greenland site, it’s not “global.” (Though twelve trees from Siberia was global enough, somehow.)
Global 2m temp’ change is 0.066 C / decade: http://policlimate.com/climate/jra25_t2m_1979_2012.png
KR said (July 8, 2012 at 7:58 am0
“…Joseph Bastardi – If you don’t like or prefer the F&R 2011 methods, I might suggest looking at the much simpler analysis of John Nielsen-Gammon…where he simply plots temperature broken into the categories of El Nino, La Nina, and neutral periods. He also in part accounts for volcanic aerosols by excluding years immediately after major eruptions. What he finds is that all three categories show warming at ~0.16 C/decade. And no evidence of a decrease in that rate…”
I suppose it also shows there’s been no INCREASE in that rate either. And what experiments took out the CO2 component? You’re implying that every bit of that warming at ~0.16 C/decade is due to CO2 alone, that there are no natural forces or cycles to contribute to that level.
KR also said (July 8, 2012 at 10:30 am)
“…We’re currently at ~0.8 C above where we would be without anthropogenic warming. At 0.16 C/decade, the current rate of increase, we’ll see another degree C in under 65 years, not 200…”
But of course, using that same .16 degree per decade, and extrapolating back, you could say we were at “zero” 50 years ago (in 1962) and a steady rise from there meant that we should never have gone through “zero” again.
So, let’s look at the facts? We’ll use GISS anomalies (supposedly the most accurate because of their ESTIMATION of Arctic temperatures).
First, it shows that our current warming is leveling off at an average of .55 degrees above “zero” (which, according to you, means we would be at a level of minus .25 degrees if man wasn’t around).
Second, we see we’ve been through “zero” several times (first was prior to 1940, the last prior to 1980). So we flirted with “zero” over a ~40 year period, the last pass through “zero” happening about 32 years ago. Where was the expected ~0.64 C degrees of warming during that period (.16 x 4)?
That means, according to GISS, there was NO net warming from about 1940 to 1980. Maybe this is one reason GISS uses the base period of 1951-1980 to place their “zero”. Everything after that would show as “warmer” than that period.
Third: If, according to GISS we were at about minus .3 in 1880, by 1980 we should have been at 1.3 degrees above “zero” (again, your current warming value of .16 per decade x 10 = expected 1.6 degree rise).
We never made it. We still haven’t made it. Your numbers just don’t add up…
Jesse, you may have missed my post earlier.
Here
I think it qualifies as a cycle that fits what we have seen in the resent warming.
Perhaps what we need here is an experiment. Your AGW theory says that we will see continuous warming from increasing CO2. My Climate Cycle theory says we are in the middle of the 30 year cooling period of a 60 year Cycle, and will see 15 more years of steady or decreasing temperatures. Personally I think the last 15 years pretty well falsifies your theory, but I’m told that 15 years is to short for “Climate Science”, So lets just see were the temp goes from here. Care to make a bet?
How about we bet for the entire western civilization, because if I’m wrong we get Thermageddon, with permanent extreme weather, dozens of meters of sea level rise, famine, climate refuges, extinct polar bears, and all the other things that have been repeatedly proven to not be happening. And if your wrong, then the socialist ‘Global Governance’, poverty, deindustrialization, horrors inherent in any attempt at enforcing ‘Sustainability’ (think Khmer Rouge year zero), and all the rest of the supposed necessary solutions to CAGW and Climate Change will have been for NOTHING.
Jesse Fell says:
July 8, 2012 at 2:34 pm
“There are other cycles, too, but none of the size and shape to fit what we are seeing now.”
Rubbish.
@jesse fell: “Help me understand where the contradiction in what K2 wrote lies. ”
Ok. What I wrote was mathematical shorthand. A “stationary process” is one in which the mean and standard deviation do not change with time. (It’s more complicated than that, but that’s good enough for our purposes.)
K2’s first statement attempts to dismiss the observation in my original post, which is that the total number of temperature records has declined significantly in the last 6 years compared to the previous 13 years. K2 argues that the number of records should be expected to decline with time.
That is true for a stationary process.
Then he goes on to argue that the number of high records is growing relative to low records, and this is evidence that the mean is increasing with time — violating the requirement for a stationary process (that the mean stay constant) and causing an ever-increasing number of high temperature records. You can’t have it both ways. Either the recent sharp decrease in the number of records is indicative of something unusual and interesting (not the natural result of longer temperature records), or the mean temperature isn’t moving. Since the mean temperature has moved on the satellite time scale of 30 years or so, the process is not stationary and K2’s first argument doesn’t hold water.
Here is an old paper which discusses the problem of the probability of setting temperature records as a function of the length of the climate record:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493%281977%29105%3C1442%3ATPORDL%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Figure 3 is probably of most interest, in which he derives empirical curves for the probability of getting 1, 2, 3…. 9 temperature records (in this case, low ones) in a winter season as a function of record length. Clearly, longer data periods generate fewer records. The NOAA record-temperatures dataset is from a large number of stations (about 5500) having a minimum recording period of 30 years, and minimum coverage of 50% during that record. In other words, pretty loose criteria. But the key is that eliminating periods shorter than 30 years cuts off the steeply falling portion of the curves. Stations also continually enter and leave the dataset during the time series, as newer stations satisfy the 30-year cutoff and older ones stop being reported. The number of stations has grown steadily by about 7.5% from 1993 to 2012. I did not normalize for that, nor for the average reporting period of the stations, but one might expect the growing coverage to partly counteract the aging of the stations, since newly-entered stations contribute disproportionately more records to the total.
So I still maintain that there is essentially zero chance that an average 30% drop in the number of records in a relatively short period of time is a normal result of increasing record period. I don’t have a really good hypothesis. Solar variation is tempting, but the drop is larger than we see during the previous solar minimum (1993-1998). There are many unusual features of the latest solar minimum, from its length to its magnetic properties. I didn’t carry the series further back, because NOAA only started keeping the maximum-low and minimum-high records in 1993. Prior to April 1993, only max/min records are available. The maximum-low is particularly interesting, because global warming theory suggests that’s where we should see the greatest effect.
“The folly of blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming”
The same folly was evident in Australia during the last drought we had. Prof Tim Flannery predicted that Queensland would never have drought breaking rains again. A desalination plant was built. The drought was broken, the dams filled, the desalination plant put in moth balls.
Efforts were made to blame the floods on AGW but that was debunked & those that made the claim retracted their statment. (head of the IPCC no less)
Australia is known as the Country of droughts & floddings rains see:
http://www.imagesaustralia.com/mycountry.htm
For those in Texas with tree problems, try some Blue Gums they will handle the heat OK. They can be a problem in a wildfire though.
Jesse Fell for the scam.
RE: Jesse Fell: (July 8, 2012 at 2:34 pm)
Eric, The Milankovic cycle appears to control the coming and going of the ice ages; if it in fact does, we aren’t due for another one for thousands of years. So the Milankovic cycle really has nothing to do with the changes that we are seeing now. There is an 11 year cycle of solar activity, but this doesn’t help explain the rise in the Earth’s temperatures that started to become anomalously large around 35 or 40 years ago, and has proceeded to do so with any variations bearing the stamp of a cycle. There are other cycles, too, but none of the size and shape to fit what we are seeing now.
It is my understanding that Henrik Svensmark has recently published a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in which he correlates cold periods in geological history with periods of time in which the solar system transits the spiral arms of the Galaxy and warm, polar-ice free, periods with transit through the clear regions of the Galaxy. He notes that galactic cosmic radiation is particularly intense in the spiral arms and this radiation appears to facilitate or enhance the condensation of water vapor in the Earths atmosphere. Modulation of this radiation by short-term solar magnetic activity seems to correlate with satellite cloud-cover data. From his viewpoint and data, this radiation appears to be *the* primary determinant for warm and cold climatic periods on the Earth. “The clouds take their orders from the stars.”
Of course, theories of non-anthropogenic climate change are now regarded by many as environmental treason.
It would appear that the Milankovitch cycle may be only a secondary effect.
Seriously Jesse. All the history and climate I have read, (and it is fairly extensive) tells me the exact opposite of the conclusions you have come to. Curious.