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.
KR;
“You’re wrong, you’re wrong!” with no justification other than unfounded ideas about the math…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sir, I and a few others understand what it is that your tried to say. The manner in which you said it however was, at best, confusing, at worst, completely wrong.
Actually, I HAVE taken the Manua Loa CO2 data and pulled it into Excel, and yes, it is a slightly exponential, there was an article on WUWT a while back that went into some detail on this. I don’t dispute this, but I dispute what you said. So perhaps you should stop ranting and think about how to express yourself properly in the first place.
I’ve also looked at the fossil fuel consumption graphs (posted links for you no less) which also exhibit an exponential growth. I pointed out to you earlier however, that this is a consequence of adding them together. Since their “start up” and “ramp up” times do not coincide, cumulatively they give the illussion of exponential growth. Not a single one of the individual fossil fuel consumption graphs by itself shows any evidence of continued exponential growth.
Nor is it possible for any of them to do so for any extended period of time. They are limited resources, and were the exponential growth of the last century to continue, the mass required would in short order exceed the mass of the earth.
Your rant about the stupidity of others when it comes to math pretty much discredits the point you are trying to make. Word it properly, and you might discover that some of us jump in and agree with some parts of what you are trying to explain. But at day’s end, CO2 is logarithmic, and the exponential growth of CO2 or the fossil fuel consumption which (supposedly) drives that growth, is a ponzi scheme. You’ve predicated your entire argument on a continued exponential growth which is by definition physically impossible.
I was always told whoever started shouting lost the argument.
KR;
the source of the 25×10^22 extra joules of heat in the oceans since 1970 >>>>
The best OHC data we have is from the ARGO buoys which have shown a decline since inception. Prior to that, our data regarding OHC was so spotty that at best it was an educated guess, not an actual measurement of any sort.
davidmhoffer – If you take the log of values of an exponential function (Ae^(kT) with fixed constant A and k, you will get a linear plot. That’s the way the math works.
If you take the log of values of a greater than exponential growth factor, you will see an upward curving line, increasing greater than linearly. The log of a less than exponential growth will curve downward. That’s the way exponential functions work. CO2 growth is not “slightly exponential” as you claim, but “greater than exponential” in growth. End of story. Please ask a high-school math teacher for clarification.
As to fossil fuel use – “this is a consequence of adding them together” – yes, a consequence of adding up the individual contributions. Including developing nations (think China) that are continuing to expand their energy use. If the numbers add up to greater than exponential, that’s just what they are. And we certainly have enough carbon to burn to put us (if we continue to burn it) at 4-6 C over previous temperatures. Which means 3-5 C over anything that occurred during the Holocene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png), the only time we’ve had civilization. Pardon me if I consider that significant.
Enough. Adieu
KR says:
July 9, 2012 at 8:12 pm
“You’re promoting MUC’s again.”
No, I am talking about standard solutions to partial differential equations which are expected in natural systems. You must not have much practice in “the field” because anyone who did would immediately know what I am talking about and understand.
“Solar forcings are from…blah, blah, blah”
But, these are shoehorned into a theoretical model without actual knowledge of how they play together, or of what parts are missing. I am giving you data, and data trumps theory. Data is what is real, not just some flight of fancy of how you would like things to be.
“Present your evidence…”
It’s there. It’s right there. Look at it!
I am on solid ground. You are the one making unprovable assertions. I do not have to know everything about trains to know that the light bearing down on me in the dark with an Earth shaking rumble is something I better get out of the way of. You, and others, have only constructed a narrative. It all fits together nicely, when you have ignored contrary evidence. But it’s just a superficially consistent construct, and mere consistency is not proof.
And, my data says you are wrong.
KR
If the numbers add up to greater than exponential, that’s just what they are.
Enough. Adieu
>>>>>>>
If I measure the upward velocity of the valve stem on a bus tire starting at the lowest possible spot and tracking it in increments for 1/4 of a revolution, I could then plot the data, show conclusively that the upward velocity of the valve stem was increasing exponentially, and conclude that it would reach orbit in a matter of minutes. My analysis would be exactly as accurate as the one you have presented, and would come to an erroneous conclusion by the exact same means which is to ignore the physical limitations of the system. You can shout and scream all you want about this data or that being exponential, but that valve stem is just not going into orbit. This is called the law of wheels, and is taught to children all over the world at a very young age:
Oh….the wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round
’round and ’round
’round and ’round
The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round
All, day, long.
Adieu ta ya too.
RE: KR:July 9, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Spector – An exponential over time is expressed as Ae^(kT), where A and K are constants.
If one looks at the increase in CO2 over the period from 1880 to the present, the early part of the curve looks like an exponential curve arrested around 1940, probably due to World War II. there is a rapid rebound after the war that seems to gradually start running out of steam around 1980. David Archibald in his article, ‘The Fate of All Carbon’ indicates that, based on estimates of available resources — perhaps outdated — that there may not enough be enough carbon left to fully double the CO2 concentration and perhaps cause a one degree anthropogenic effect.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/13/the-fate-of-all-carbon/
Beng, Lonnie Thompson is not a data hider. He has in fact posted large amounts of his data on the NOAA database — check it out. And he does not hide the source of his data — ice cores taken from glaciers in Peru. At Ohio State University, he is maintaining the world’s largest collection of unsectioned, unanalyzed ice cores — for the use of the next generation of glaciologists, who, he says, will not have much else to work with, given the rate at which glaciers are disappearing. If he had something to hide, he would be glad for the fact that the next generation would have no evidence on which to verify his data. As for your contention that the Andean glaciers are only, or even less than, a 1000 years old — you might want to double check that — carbon dating of ice cores indicates that the glaciers are much older. But even if the glaciers were only, say, 900 years old, would that in any way disprove that their current shrinking is caused by AGW? And if you don’t think that glaciers are shrinking, there are many sites where you can see then and now pictures of glaciers. The extent to which they have shrunk since, say, Gillgan’s Island was cancelled, is striking.
Jesse Fell says:
July 10, 2012 at 4:26 am
The inconvenient fact is that they started melting before any industrialization. Does Thompson not hide this little bit of information?
Your fear mongering is getting boring. Also the way you only tell part of the truth.
KR says:
July 9, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Here is the type of thing I am talking about. The Earth is a great big fluid containment vessel. It’s minimum frequency modes of oscillation are thereby extremely low. It’s like the vibration of a piano string – the longer and thicker you make it, the lower the tone. Rossby waves are known with very long periods, e.g., from the link:
It appears we haven’t been looking long enough to find longer ones, but they are theoretically viable and likely. There are a plethora of named oscillatory features in the climate: the ENSO, the NAO, the AO, the PDO, the AMO… these are all modes or modal superpositions of the system being driven with random excitation so that they appear quasi-periodic. It’s not in any way, shape, or form unusual to have such dynamics play out in a natural system. Quite the contrary, it would be extremely unusual not to observe quasi-periodic behavior in a natural system.
The data says there is a strong 60 year quasi-periodicity in the temperature record. The data says that CO2 is driven by temperature, while its coupling feedback effect on temperature itself is negligible. That is what the data says. You can twist and squirm and try to worm out of it, and maybe even convince yourself that all is well, but the bottom line is that this AGW farce is about to descend into an utter fiasco – not only are temperatures failing to respond to the CO2 signal, but we aren’t even driving CO2. The repercussions are going to be severe.
@Robbie:
Arctic sea ice is way below normal due to the fact that the polar current and the polar wind patterns over the winter flushed ridiculous amounts of arctic sea ice southward into the Bering Sea, and left much of the arctic over northern Russia nearly ice-free all winter, in spite of very cold temperatures.
All of the ice that was flushed out into the Bering Sea rapidly melted after the onset of Spring, as would be expected. You can attribute this “ice loss” to “global warming” if you want, but all it was was a somewhat unusual weather pattern which resulted in almost no sea ice over northern Russia, and an abundance of sea ice being flushed into the Bering Sea, where it subsequently melted.
Also, if you precious warming is so “global”, then why is SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE sea ice about 500,000 square kilometers ABOVE NORMAL, and why has SH Sea Ice been above normal for an entire year now????
David Ball says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:29 am
“Also the way you only tell part of the truth.”
SOP. Nothing looks blue when you view the world through rose colored glasses. And, thus Jesse swallows the line about “given the rate at which glaciers are disappearing” without looking to see that glaciers are hardly going extinct.
As for heat and drought, we (western Kentucky) are in the center area of hottest and driest summer on record. But AGW??? Last year was the wettest year on record by 15% and average temperature. I’m willing to give it a bit more study before I’m willing to hand over tax payments to a United Nations tax scheme.
@KR says: “I would suggest looking at Meehl et al 2009 (ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/US%20temp%20range%20Meehl%202009.pdf), where the data shows a decreasing number of total records over the 60 years examined (decreasing by about 2 orders of magnitude), as expected with observation of stochastic variation, with the ratio of high to low records changing considerably since the late 1970′s, as expected with slow changes in the mean temperatures. The data there is quite clear.”
Yes, sorry, I was confusing you with Paul K2. Mind if I call you both Bruce? It will cut down on the confusion…. 🙂
In any event, I’ve read Meehl et. al. and cited it (although not by name) in my first post of the thread. They make an assertion in the introduction which I believe to be incorrect:
“All stations record span the same period, from 1950 to 2006, to avoid any effect that
would be introduced by a mix of shorter and longer records.”
The language isn’t perfectly clear to me, but I think this means they chose stations with continuous records from 1950 to 2006. But in fact, they will still have a mix of longer and shorter records, because that depends on the time at which the stations were established. Unless they found stations which were all started their measurement series in 1950, they have a mix of varying record lengths.
The ideal decline in the number of records for a single station is fairly smooth and (as their abstract points out) follows a hyperbolic 1/N curve. But different stations are on different points of that curve, depending on how long their recording period already was by 1950.
The effect I think is unusual and significant is a large decline in the average total number of records in just a few years, by nearly 50% between 2005-2006 and 2008-2009. I reproduce part of the numbers in my previous post here:
2001 100.0
2002 125.6
2003 111.0
2004 96.2
2005 106.7
2006 119.0
2007 90.7
2008 51.1
2009 62.0
2010 69.9
2011 81.7
2012 92.2 (by doubling the 6-month number)
Note the rather abrupt drop to a new average level. That isn’t the smooth decline within the local variability that one would expect from increasing data record length. So I think something interesting is going on. Also, there’s a U-shaped pattern from 2007 to now, the bottom of which corresponds to two global events: the most extraordinary solar minimum since 1913-14, and the Great Recession.
I have no hypothesis for causation; I just note the interesting coincidence.
diogenesnj – Meehl at al studied “the decay of observed annual record high maximum temperatures (..) compared to annual record low minimum temperatures (…) averaged over the U.S. since 1950“, although you have to read closely to get that detail. They accumulated the for each station (with that length of data) from 1950 on. So the 1/n records per year are about what you would expect – they did not include record temperatures from before the start date of the study.
I would be wary of drawing strong conclusions from only the last few years, though – there’s very little data there, and nowhere near enough time or data to conclude anything statistically significant from that short a period.
The basic problem with blaming anthropogenic CO2 for the observed climate change is that it is a ‘one-trick pony’ in the radiation band of interest. Its 15-micron (667 cycles per centimeter) absorption band stands like a one-foot diameter tree in the middle of a ten-foot wide stream.
It has been shown (by David Archibald) that most of its greenhouse effect occurs when the first 20 parts per million of CO2 is added to the atmosphere. The effect of each additional cohort of CO2 is progressively minimized by the fact that you can only kill the same horse once.
In clear tropical air, the MODTRAN atmospheric radiation model indicates a raw, no feedback, greenhouse effect temperature rise of less than one degree Celsius for each full doubling of the CO2 content (280=0, 560=1, 1120=2, 2240=3, 4480=4, … etc PPM=deg).
The current seasonally corrected CO2 level reported by the Mauna Loa Observatory is about 394 PPM, about a 41% increase from the nominal base of 280 PPM, or just over 49 percent of a full doubling on a logarithmic scale.
In order to blame the temperature rise observed to date on increased CO2 alone, it seems necessary to assume a dangerously high positive feedback factor that would double or triple the natural effect. This does not seem likely.
Also, as Dr. Svensmark appears to have evidence showing a fine-scale correlation between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover, where most clouds indicate condensing convection cells, there is a very sound reason to expect that most of the climate change of this century has been cosmogenic rather than anthropogenic in nature– see the 9 minute point of his video: ‘The Cloud Mystery.’
Ref: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/07/the-folly-of-blaming-the-eastern-u-s-heat-wave-on-global-warming/#comment-1027136
At this time, it remains an open question whether man will ever be able to burn enough carbon to reach a concentration of 560 PPM before carbon fuels becomes so expensive to recover that few can afford to use them.
Ref: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/13/the-fate-of-all-carbon/
Excellent analysis, thanks.
[SNIP: Commenting here is a privilege, not a right. If you are going to be insulting, take it somewhere that appreciates it. -REP]
I guess you do not like to be reminded of your many failures.
Reminding you of inconvenient facts in your public history is not insuliting, on the face of it.
If you feel it is insulting perhaps you should hold your silence, rather than make silly predictions and non sequiter remarks
Do you have children or grandchildren?
Have you consider what they will think of your activity here and elsewhere.
I can understand why the people paying you to maintain this site would object to facts which do not support the failed “warming is not happening” theory.
[REPLY: The terms “denial” and “denier”, as well as their derivatives, are forbidden here. You can check site policy here. You should know that Anthony Watts does not get paid to maintain this site, your understanding of what we believe is seriously flawed, most of the commenters here are far better qualified to discuss climate than you are, and it is very definitely you who shouldremain silent until you learn enough. -REP]