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.
Nick,
The earth has been in a warming trend since the Little Ice Age. It is worthwhile to note that the long term, gentle warming trend has not accelerated. [The green line is the trend, which is actually decelerating.]
You can see here that the rising trend is unchanged. If the ≈40% rise in CO2 had the claimed effect, the trend would be accelerating, no? But it is not.
In fact, despite steadily rising CO2 levels, the global temperature is not responding, indicating that the effect of CO2, if any, is minuscule.
The longest temperature record in the world confirms the same trend in other cities, showing that the long term rising trend is within past parameters. If CO2 caused measurable global warming, it would show up in the trend. But it doesn’t. Thus, the CO2=CAGW conjecture is falsified by real world observations.
Lester Via and Smits: I think climatology is the study of long term climate trends, and meteorology is the study of weather patterns. The two fields intersect when persistent weather pattern changes occur year after year, or when meteorologists link observed climate change impacts (like reduced Arctic ice pack) to weather pattern changes ( such as NH heat waves, droughts, floods, snowstorms, and cold spells). Eventually some climate changes can impact weather patterns.
Up until recently, the main mechanism for estimating AGW impacts on weather, was the “loaded dice” analogy. Higher average temperatures increase the odds of extreme high temperature events, or higher moisture levels in the atmosphere should result in more extreme precipitation events.
But the climate scientists underestimated the impact of AGW on the polar regions. The Arctic ice pack, and snow coverage, have fallen much faster than the climate scientists expected. This appears to be due to increased teleconnection of heat into the Arctic, and the fact that the melt mechanism of the Arctic ice pack speeds up as the pack is weakened.
So now some meteorologists are tying reduced ice pack and snow cover in the Arctic (warmer Arctic) to jet stream changes, which in turn can cause extreme weather events. In summary, because we delayed action to address AGW, we may have altered the meteorology of the NH (we ‘broke’ our weather system). This theory is gaining weight as more and more researchers publish.
In Central Oregon I have not removed the tarp from the AC yet. Most summers it runs only a day or two. If CO2 is the AGW problem and it must be reduced and coal fired electrical plants are the culprit, I see a major reduction in electrical power coming courtesy of the EPA. I grew up in the midwest and remember the windows open sweating in the sheets summer nights. Now when I go back to visit it is AC everywhere. So the question is: are the AGW alarmists willing to cut electrical power to essentials, which certainly should not include AC since we survived without it 50 years ago and most of the world does today? Under those circumstances Paul K2 could decide just how important AC is versus his concern about AGW.
In 1970 I was . I spent June in Cambridge, New York; very rural, It reached 100F. I was surprised, It was hotter than South Florida., my home.
What made it hot then? What?
Nick: You should realize that the people posting here are generally amateurs, and I have found most of the posts on this site that cover topics related to science to be incorrect. For example, just last week there was a post by Dr. Outcalt that was complete nonsense. If you take the time to read down through all the comments, you will eventually see that (even though many substantial comments were snipped by the moderator). This has been true for most of the posts that pretend to cover real science. If you take the time, and slog through the nonsense in the comments, in many cases the mistakes in the posts will become apparent.
I highly recommend reading Tamino’s site, since he has the time to identify and correct at least some of the mistakes on the posts here (like the Outcalt post). I won’t put the link to Tamino here, because I am afraid of the moderators.
[Moderator’s Note: It is absolutely fascinating that a search on the name “Paul Klem” (or “Paul K. Lem”) yields nothing of substance, but the very same anonymous coward is able to declare a respected physicist’s work “nonsense” and manages to disparage, almost in the same breath, the many professionals that comment here. “Tamino” (known to his friends as “Grant Foster”) is linked on the right. We know him of old. He’s not as bright as he thinks he is. Your grasp of the science is quite a bit shakier than you think.
Oh, yeah…. disparaging the moderators and moderation policy will get you snipped. You have been given a fair degree of latitude here and my advice is don’t push it. -REP]
Blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming is just as follyish (?) (okay, foolish) as blaming the cooling wave in the UK right now on global cooling.
But that won’t stop them.
Here is a high resolution Temperature anomaly map from the Modis Terra satellite for the week of June 25 to July 2.
The US hotspot is clear enough but there are quite cold areas in northwest North America, northern Europe, central Africa, central China, northeast Siberia, and Australia.
http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/6124/june24tojuly2.png
Larger version.
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/2936/june25tojuly2large.png
Certainly does not look like a GHG signal; the weather is variable is a better explanation.
And we are freezing here in Australia – areas up to 7C below normal at times – coldest start to July in 27 years was one report & June was cold too. Minimum records falling like autumn leaves.
R.S.Brown says:
July 7, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Many folks, including reporters here in Ohio will remember the “Drought
of 1988″. We had high temps and low precipitation. It was bad news for
the people, the crops, and the critters alike.
This week we’ve beaten several of the daily temperature “records”
set that summer… except now the NWS/NOAA has become even
more reliant on temperature records taken at airports.
That was weather then, just as this is weather now.
===================================================================
And the airport in Columbus has been expanded since then.
(I moved here about that time. The winters were brutal. A couple of close to all time record lows in 1989.)
A point of personal order here… On our first 108 (Heat index) day of July 4th, 2012…I skated (inline) 12 miles, 4 times around a local 3 mile trail around a local Minneapolis lake. In 1988 I biked 12.5 miles from Excelsior MN, to an aunt and uncles in Edina MN. I figure if I can go from age 35 to age 59 and still “perform” I’m doing pretty good. And I’m not worrying about AWG, as I HAVE A MEMORY and 1988 makes this summer look like a “piker” in comparison. (I.e., NO comparison.)
Paul K2;
But the climate scientists underestimated the impact of AGW on the polar regions. The Arctic ice pack, and snow coverage, have fallen much faster than the climate scientists expected.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well I have been following the climate debate from several years and that statement is just exactly opposite of the facts. They grossly over estimates ice pack melt in NH, predicting an ice free arctict that is no where in sight. They predicted coastal cities under water by now, which are having trouble actually measuring any local sea level change at all. They predicted melting in the SH too (how convenient of you to leave that out) but the ice in the SH has been increasing (which you also conveniently over look). As for the rest of your tripe, it amounts to cherry picking some data and deriving a linear trend from a cyclic system.
They predicted accelerating global temp increases, instead, the highest concentrations of CO2 ever recorded in our lifetimes correspond to declining temperatures. The predicted increased desertification, we’ve seen a decline instead. They predicted increased severeweather, but on a global basis, total cyclone energy has declined ever since we started measuring it 30 years ago.
What your various comments amount to is sifting through reams and reams and reams of data that says the exact opposite of what the climate scientists and their models predicted to find the odd short term trend that agrees with the general meme and then pretend that it represents some sort of long term trend. For those of us who actually pay attention to the whole picture, the only one you are fooling is yourself.
@TomE
“Under those circumstances Paul K2 could decide just how important AC is versus his concern about AGW.”
When the alarmists actually ACT like they are alarmed, (instead of just mouthing).
1) I’ll be totally amazed.
2) I might bother taking them 0.001% seriously
Come on K2.. turn of all you AC’s computers.. anything that uses power, shows us you REALLY believe. Maybe you can then try and persuade AlGore and the many thousands who junketted to Rio, Cancun etc..
You know what Im tired of? Im tired of news and weather casters telling us how hot it feels. How the heck do they know how hot I feel. I bet you Im way cooler when Im standing in my sprinklers:) Wish they would just go back to degrees and humidity separately instead of making up some arbitrary number based on feels like and presenting that to us as today’s temps.
Paul K2,
You will get plenty of misinformation from tamina’s blog. And he censors opposing points of view; the mark of an insecure Grant Foster. That’s why his traffic is negligible. Here, you can bring the talking points you get from tamina and watch them get deconstructed.
davidmhoffer wrote: Well I have been following the climate debate from several years and that statement is just exactly opposite of the facts. They grossly over estimates ice pack melt in NH, predicting an ice free arctict that is no where in sight. They predicted coastal cities under water by now, which are having trouble actually measuring any local sea level change at all.
Try getting some facts from the source, instead of relying on WUWT to process the information before feeding it to you.
I copied and pasted the predictions from the 4th IPCC report:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
Please note these predicitions contradict your statement:
Snow cover is projected to contract. Widespread increases in thaw depth are projected over most permafrost regions. {10.3, 10.6}
Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios. In some projections, arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century. {10.3}
It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent. {10.3}
If radiative forcing were to be stabilised in 2100 at A1B levels[14], thermal expansion alone would lead to 0.3 to 0.8 m of sea level rise by 2300 (relative to 1980–1999). Thermal expansion would continue for many centuries, due to the time required to transport heat into the deep ocean. {10.7}
Contraction of the Greenland Ice Sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100. Current models suggest that ice mass losses increase with temperature more rapidly than gains due to precipitation and that the surface mass balance becomes negative at a global average warming (relative to pre-industrial values) in excess of 1.9°C to 4.6°C. If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m. The corresponding future temperatures in Greenland are comparable to those inferred for the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when palaeoclimatic information suggests reductions of polar land ice extent and 4 to 6 m of sea level rise. {6.4, 10.7}
AndyG55;
When the alarmists actually ACT like they are alarmed, (instead of just mouthing).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You’ve hit on one of my favourite points. Are the alarmist scientists who are predicting that the whole planet is going to roast except for just a handful of areas acting in any way as if that were true? Are they seeking citizenship in countries like Canada, and buying land at both high latitudes and high elevations? No they are not. Why would anyone who is so certain of a disaster about to befall humanity on a global basis not take such simple steps to protect their families? Their children and grandchildren? Why are they not building survival habitats stocked with canned goods in areas that they claim will be amongst the few that are sustainable for the support of human life? Why do they wail and scream and demand that we take action to save the world’s people while doing not one d*mn thing to save themselves, their kids, and their grandkids? Are we to believe that their altruism runs so deep that out of concern for humanity they have not taken a single step in regard to the safety of themselves and their kin?
Instead they continue their course of conjuring up magic sufficiently advanced that they hope it is indistinguishable from science. Arthur C Clarke would be impressed.
Paul K2 says:
July 7, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Its peculiar that so many readers here seem to deny that much of the middle part of the US mainland has had some extremely hot weather recently.
======================================================
ME: Sorry to disapoint but I haven’t read anyone denying that. My 10 year old RadioShack sensor says it got to 102 F on my front porch today. What have you been reading?
===============================================================
PAUL: Most people who live there seem to be asking “What’s UP with this extremely hot weather?” and “When will it end?”
===========================================================
ME: Maybe it will end when the CAGW “Team” stop blowing hot air UP our asses?
=================================================================
PAUL: Well, what’s up might be that we have changed the meteorological system.
=================================================================
ME: Got anything besides a hockey stick to prove that? (Don’t bother posting a link to “An Inconvenient
Truth”.) I don’t know how old you are but I’m old enough to remember hot summers in the past. They happen sometimes. Always have. Always will. Now somebody figured out how to make money from it.
========================================================================
PAUL: My friends and family are sorry to hear, that these kinds of heat waves are here to stay, and with more on the way in the coming years.
================================================================
ME: So tell me. Just what is the weather “supposed to be”? What is “normal” in your world?
KR says:
July 7, 2012 at 11:26 am
It’s just like lung cancer – any individual case might be from a genetic issue, accidental exposure to toxins or radiation, or just plain bad luck. But the changing statistics of increasing lung cancer (which was in the past extremely rare) are almost wholly attributable to smoking rates.
=================================================
Yeah, it is the same “lying with statistics” story again. In your example, what about the possibility of changing statistics of increasing lung cancer because of increasing lung cancer among non-smokers, is it attributable to smoking rates? No, of course not.
As for your “global warming”, even if it was real, it is a sort of average thing and could be the result of increasing temperatures in cold areas while the warmer areas were getting cooler on average. Hence you can not even theoretically attribute heat waves to a “global average warming”, it is completely unscientific.
Paul K2 says (July 7, 2012 at 2:05 pm)
I highly recommend reading Tamino’s site,
———
Reading, sadly, is all once can do. As soon as any opinion which differs in the slightest degree from the Great Man’s views are sent in, they are either suppressed or the commentator is gratuitously insulted with the crowd cheering him on.
Since you have been talking about Arctic ice trends, here’s a perfect example. Note (1) that one should not fear the moderators here about linking to a site with a different outlook, and (2) Tamino’s blast of rudeness to a dissenter.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/sea-ice-3-d/
Paul K2 says: Anthony, have you bothered to read the Cohen (2012) paper I linked to that was published in the GRL entitled “Asymmetric seasonal temperature trends”? There is much there you might like; but most of the analysis contradicts your conjectures in this post.
Paul, have _you_ read it?
Did you notice that all the pretty graphs are NOT climate , they are climate models. Now with the massive ammounts of data available for the last 30 years why do you suppose they chose to analyse model data to comment on climate rather than climate data? Or why , having studied climate models do they not draw conclusions about climate models rather than climate?
Why do they limit thier study to the last 30 years when models runs are available going back centuries. It is well known that there is a circa 60 year variation in climate and that there was a cooling running upto mid 70’s. Odd they chose to skip that period when looking at thier “trends”.
This is not climate science it is SPAM. They and many others are spamming peer reviewed literature with this sort of pseudo science on an almost daily basis now and it is no more convincing than the magic claims that I could grow 9″ of dick in under 15 days that I receive with similarly boring repitition.
Had they looked at seasonal difference between the warmig and the cooling parts of the cycle, it may have been interesting or even informative. Sadly they missed that opertunity and pointlessly looked at variations in the output of models that have notoriously failed to match climate.
Paul K2: I got interested in this after the 2009 publication of the NCAR study discussing record high vs. record low temperatures. They identified a trend to more high records, and it was picked up by Andrew Revkin of the NYT.
NOAA collects and reports 4 types of daily temperature records: maximum, minimum, maximum low, and minimum high. Here is a simple tabulation of the total of all 4 types of records, from 1994 to now (2012 is annualized by doubling the first six months):
Year: Temperature records (in thousands):
1994 103.4
1995 128.0
1996 143.0
1997 117.1
1998 136.8
1999 117.8
2000 134.6
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
Insofar as the number of temperature records is a proxy for weather extremes, it’s pretty clear that there has been a *decrease* over the last six years compared to the previous dozen or so.
mean 1994-2006: 110.2
mean 2007-2012: 74.6
That’s a pretty big change, more than 30%.
Now, let’s see, what declined substantially over the period from 2007 or so to now, reaching a minimum around 2008-2009? Hmmm…. Oh, I know!
http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfjmms.html
Nah, couldn’t be. Climate scientists assure us that variations in solar activity are too small to explain much of anything….
Duh. I’ve been trying to explain this to people for over a week.
Paul K2 says:
July 7, 2012 at 1:56 pm
But the climate scientists underestimated the impact of AGW on the polar regions.
====================================================
Let me tell you this: every single climate scientist who estimates the impact of AGW on whatever is blatantly wrong. I mean, even if AGW was real. AGW is a purely statistical sort of average calculation product derived from a sample of temperature measurements.
An average can not have impact on parts of the sample, it is exactly the other way round.
Face it Anthony… The earth is warming. Regardless of what you think the cause is, it’s getting hotter. And guess what happens when it gets hotter? More heat records are broken, droughts will be more severe, etc.. Is the point of this article that you don’t even think the earth is getting hotter?
[REPLY: Yes, you want Anthony to defend denialist sites like this and this. We love the smell of real science in the morning. -REP]
REPLY: What a warped conclusion. I’m talking about weather patterns and this anonymous twit thinks I’m in denier mode. Sure we’ve seen an increase in temperature in the last century, I’ve NEVER said we haven’t. I just don’t think its is a crisis, and I don’t see any evidence that CO2 forcings have overridden natural variations yet. – Anthony
Paul K2;
Try getting some facts from the source, instead of relying on WUWT to process the information before feeding it to you.
I copied and pasted the predictions from the 4th IPCC report:
>>>>>>>>>>>
Sir,
I see that you are no run of the mill troll. You are an expert troll. You planted an agregiously false statement in the hopes of getting called on it so that you could respond with reams of quotes that seem to support your position. For the record:
1. I got most of my background in climate initially from reading AR4 myself, long before I discovered WUWT. It was reading the highly cherry picked, grossly misrepresented, marketing spin dressed up as science, cherry picked total cr*p that convinced me that the whole mess was a facade in the first place.
2. The endless quotes, out of context and frequently poorly, inaccurately, or even fictitiously cited that comprise AR4 could be used to show that they predicted that the earth would freeze over tomorrow if you cherry picked enough. The wording of Ar4 is such that it could be taken to mean pretty much ANYTHING after the fact.
3. Your original assertions did not specify AR4, they were much broader than that, suggesting what the leadership of the CAGW meme have being saying, which goes far beyond what AR4 said, and encompasses a considerable amount of science that has been….. ooops I mean magic…. that has been published in the years since AR4. AR5 is on the horizon in part because AR4 has proven to be a complete failure.
If you want to debate AR4, then say so up front. But don’t come here, try and tell me where I should get my facts from when you don’t even know in the first place where I get them from and where I don’t, and don’t make general statements that you then defend by trying to exclude everything before and since AR4 from the discussion.
Sorry for under estimating your troll abilities earlier. Clearly you get a capital T. Troll.
REPLY: Yes Paul K2 who previously commented here as Paul Klemencic is a well known troll. He mostly hangs out at Lucia’s. I generally ignore him as he’s hopeless. – Anthony