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.
The BBC did a show on weird weather that can be found on youtube, and a youtube regular that I am not allowed to mention on this site constructed a nice overview of this on youtube and his DCoftheWeek site.
Mr. B.
In other words, I try to keep an open mind and accept the facts as they are, not the way I would like them to be.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
And yet you present not a single fact in support of your position, you only cite WHO you believe. Odd that you claim the support of factual evidence, yet cite none.
Thanks Wade and Otsar. That is a refreshing reminder of how I think critically and of the frustration of dealing with those who don’t.
Mr B
“Over 95% of Scientist worldwide believe global warming is real and directly related to human activity.”
—————————-
Actually, Mr. B, I can’t recall ever being asked. Perhaps that opinion pole was conducted in Cantonese or Russian or Spanish or Hindi or Arabic…..
Werner Brozek – You’ve raised an interesting question, why the warming seen in the 1930’s-1940’s.
Take a look at temperature versus solar input. In the first part of the 20th century insolation was high, aerosols (sorry, not covered in the WFT’s website) were quite low (very few volcanic episodes, for example, when you examine the natural forcings), and hence a combination of natural forcings led to early century warming. As a side note, the sea surface temperatures (SST’s)
Now, however, insolation is dropping, natural and anthropogenic aerosols are high, and yet temperatures are rising rapidly. If you look at the temperature record, current changes are being driven by significant anthropogenic influences. And it’s currently warming at 0.18C/decade, as opposed to the 0.13C/decade of the first part of the century, with a per century trend higher than the per 60 trend you pointed out.
It’s warming faster than the first part of the century, faster over time, and that is by definition acceleration.
—
Smokey – What I showed, actually, demonstrates that current warming is due to anthropogenic influences, to GHG increases, rather than the natural forcings that would otherwise have induced a great deal of cooling over the last 50 years.
As I said before, distorted graphs (such as the ones you produced) are in fact deliberately deceptive. At this point I can no longer extend you the benefit of doubt – you have clearly demonstrated that you’re willing to distort the data to support your point of view.
Mr. B. says:
July 7, 2012 at 6:48 pm
====================================
(Yawn)
Question. This map shows most of the world is experiencing below normal temperatures. How does this square with Spencers UAH latest results that show above normal temperatures?
Mr. B. says:
July 7, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Yeah I know , it’s all a hoax created by the liberal media and the leftist scientific community. That’s the other attempt some people use to justify non belief in global warming. Yet these same people still believe Iraq had WMD’s and Saddam Husien was involved in 9/11. The biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public and the world at large.
====================================================
So, according to you the last Iraq war was a hoax perpetrated by the American president, the majority of the Congress and 35 other countries who sent their troops to Iraq. But at the same time the IPCC and the leaderships of some Academies of Science can not create a hoax nor can the left wing dominated media. Very logical.
Speaking of the American National Academy of Science, did all the 2,200 members and 400 foreign associates vote to approve the AGW concept or was it just the leadership (http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/leadership/nas-council.html) ? I mean, the most members have nothing to do with the “climate science”. Even the most members of the “Leadership and Governance” have nothing to do with climate professionally. Doesn’t it smell like hoax now?
hey Mr. B., you forgot to say we all are also holocaust deniers, flat earthers, Anti-Science, creationists, and in the pay of Big Oil.
Seriously, that 95% of yours isn’t Scientist, its CLIMATE Scientist. Only bought and paid for Climey’s need apply to any of their polls, because if you aren’t one of them, your vote gets dropped out before the tally.
KR says:
July 7, 2012 at 11:26 am
…. the statistics of weather shift, that’s climate change. And what we’re seeing are the weather statistics moving (see http://tinyurl.com/cgnaj79 for a discussion and data) to hotter and higher energy events…..
So no, this particular heat wave cannot be directly attributed to climate change. But we’re certainly going to see a lot more more of them, with fewer cold events, as climate averages change and the weather dice get loaded more and more heavily to the hot side…..
___________________________
OR
Stephen Wilde could be correct, esp. given the weak solar cycle 24
That sure sounds like what I have observed the Jet Stream doing for the last few years and as a farmer I watch it carefully.
OR
E.M. Smith could be correct. Just before entering into a bond event, the ending of warmth turns into a lot of unsettled weather, high winds and flooding.
OR Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on the same ~ 1500 year cycle (Bond event) that E.M. Smith discusses in depth in the above article.
If humankind is darn lucky, CO2 is the “Magic Control Knob” and we are not headed into a cold spell however I think that is highly unlikely if you look at this graph of CO2 vs temperature for the last five interglacials.
I may have just worked outside in 104F for several days (grumbling all the while) but I prefer that to ice and famine in a heart beat!
Previous reference (sorry, fighting a summer cold, not at my best) to SST’s was in reference to the HadCRUT4 corrections to WWII sea surfaced temps, due to changes in procedure at that time. Correcting _properly_ for the change in method at that time reduces the mid-century bump somewhat in HadCRUT4 – and if you disagree, be prepared to justify why correcting for a different method of data collection (engine room versus bucket) is a bad idea…
Mr. B. says:
July 7, 2012 at 6:48 pm
No doubt this post will fire up all the Rushbots out there and the personal attacks on me will be fast and furious. Good, then my point is made.
I doubt if anyone here will attack you personally. If they even bother to make the effort , they will instead, simply point out your misstatements and faulty logic.
Michael Schaefer says:
July 7, 2012 at 11:02 am
Is there any observable change to ratings when particular TV Weathermen (or women) present this ‘news’?
Personally, I find it ridiculous that people think the thunderstorms were something remarkable. Maybe for the way they marched across the region, but derechos, from my understanding of them, are capable of this any year. We had a wind storm left over from Hurricane Ike here in OH a few years ago. It was worse. It ripped a neighbors tree in half. We had to help him tear it down in the middle of the storm. Got the rope tossed over our anchor limb and the tree chose that moment to snap. I ran my ass off and wound up standing in leaves when it hit the ground. For those that doubt the power of tenths of seconds in the Olympics, I swear I was that far from road paste.
Anecdotal crap aside, I think the map says it all.
KR;
In the first part of the 20th century insolation was high, aerosols (sorry, not covered in the WFT’s website) were quite low >>>>
Is that why air quality wasn’t an issue in Europe and North America at the time? Oh wait, it was. We had jokes like “a shot an arrow into the sky, and it stuck there”. Or “its the smog, I swallowed a piece”. We had regular smog alerts in major cities all over the world. Coal was THE major source of both heat and electricity, and there were no scrubbers or regulations regarding their emissions. But aerosols were low. Uh huh.
KR;y’s
As a side note, the sea surface temperatures (SST’s)>>>>
As a side note, the info we have to calculate SST’s from is patheticaly innacurate. The best data we have is in regard to OHC as measured by the Argo Buoys which show it to be in decline since their inception.
KR;
It’s warming faster than the first part of the century, >>>>
Actually it has been coolling since the late 90’s according to the very sources you cite, despite CO2 being at the highest levels since we started recording them.
KR;
As I said before, distorted graphs (such as the ones you produced) are in fact deliberately deceptive>>>>
What convinced me most that CAGW was total garbage was digging into the graphs and studies of AR4 and discovering how completely deceptive they were. Then the climategate emails came out and proved that I was incorrect. Deception was just a complete understatement.
KR,
You missed one more linear trend line for 10 years…here it is 😉
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:14/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:13.885/detrend:-0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:-0.42/detrend:-0.23/offset:14/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:14.1/detrend:-0.23/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:17/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/to:2010/trend/offset:14
Mr. B.,
Prof Richard Lindzen exposed the corruption of the NAS here. Or do you pick and choose your authorities based on your obviously political belief system?
And KR is still arguing against solid empirical evidence showing that there is no acceleration in global temperatures. HADcru “re-adjusted” its temperature record when it saw that the data shows declining global temperatures.
There is no acceleration in the long term global temperature record, as this Bill Illis chart, based on satellite data, shows. There is simply no acceleration. The last three years of declining global temperatures happened despite the steady rise in harmless, beneficial CO2. Despite KR’s cherry-picked double talk, the data shows conclusively that there is no acceleration in global temperatures.
The inescapable conclusion: any effect from CO2 is so small that it is unmeasurable, therefore CO2 can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
Hey KR. I notice you like 30 year periods in your graphs. I like’um to.
Here’s a good one
It’s even better before the latest set of HADCRUT adjustments
I didn’t have time to read all of the comments, but I am willing to bet that the majority of the “pro-warming” comments were written by people 50 years old or or younger.
Having more than a decade and a half additional experience, I can recall summers just as hot as we are now experiencing, and winters just as cold as we experienced several years ago.
As a matter of fact, I actually experienced the additional warming due to the UHI effect: in 1974 most of the distance that I walked from the mass transit station to my house was tree lined.
The air temperature was easily 5 oF lower under the shade of the trees (no I didn’t carry a thermometer).
Most of the trees have been removed, and the sidewalk now receives direct sun,
Oh, and I hope the Earth is warming. Continuous cooling would indicate the start of a new ice age!
Oh please, ‘talk your book’ brother; it is all you’ve got.
.
RE: Mr. B.:(July 7, 2012 at 6:48 pm)
“The IPCC and the National Academy of Science believe global warming is real and directly related to human activity. Over 95% of Scientist worldwide believe global warming is real and directly related to human activity. “
Global warming may be real, but the extent to which human activity is responsible is subject to serious question. Carbon dioxide, the primary agent assumed for this effect might be likened to a gas that blocks olive-green light within a few hundred feet at current concentrations, but is perfectly transparent for all red and blue light. Adding more just ever so slightly increases the width of the total blockage.
So far, man has only increased the concentration of this gas by about 40 percent and it remains questionable if there is enough carbon in the ground to allow man to double the initial concentration. Without assuming any special positive feedback effects, (which may have been calibrated on the basis of unrelated natural warming) it appears that one must double the concentration of this gas for each one degree Celsius increase.
I believe the problem is that scientists who have chosen to work in this field may have been over-conditioned by environmental protectionist philosophy and over-zealous when trying to find and expose evidence of human degradation of the environment. For those outside that field, and for the ‘intelligentsia’ in general, I think support for this concept is primarily a matter of rubber-stamp political correctness.
It is important to note that the official documented total average global warming since 1880 is less than one degree on the Celsius scale.
Firey @ur momisugly 4.05 pm
After the awful floods in Queensland last year there were claims that they were caused by global warming/climate change.
It seems that there has been another fabrication of [infrastructure] data.
Queensland railway managers ‘falsified’ rail bridge safety inspections on the Central West line.
The matter has been referred to the CMC (Crime and Misconduct Commission).
source: Courier Mail news [Queensland], Australia. 7/7/2012
Mr B, KR,
I spent some time upthread on the explanation of the logarithmic nature of CO2, which the IPCC admits, and how that implies that additional CO2 over current levels is just not significant. I’ve posted that explanation many times in many threads to the likes of you two, and to date, have not had a single reply.
Why is that?
KR says:
July 7, 2012 at 7:24 pm
It’s warming faster than the first part of the century, faster over time, and that is by definition acceleration.
I was given the impression that anything other than CO2, such as the sun, was basically negligible. So whether the warming now as compared to 70 years ago is for different reasons may be a matter of debate, but compare the following:
Essentially identical 30 year slopes many years apart.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1912.33/to:1942.33/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1982.25/to:2013/trend
#Selected data from 1912.33
#Selected data up to 1942.33
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0156268 per year
#Selected data from 1982.25
#Selected data up to 2013
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0153446 per year
David Falkner says:
July 7, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Personally, I find it ridiculous that people think the thunderstorms were something remarkable. Maybe for the way they marched across the region, but derechos, from my understanding of them, are capable of this any year. We had a wind storm left over from Hurricane Ike here in OH a few years ago. It was worse.
======================================================
I think what made this seem worse and more news worthy wasn’t that the power was out longer (By and large it wasn’t) but that people didn’t have AC during a heat wave. At least we didn’t have to rebuild wind farms or solar power plants to get it back on.