Tom Nelson writes:
If CO2 is really such an all-powerful warming factor, and if the science is so settled, why does warmist Gavin Schmidt have so much trouble explaining why the southeastern US hasn’t warmed since the 1930s?:
“Whether this is due to some oddity in the weather patterns, air pollution effects, irrigation or something else is unclear.”
Here’s the story:
Alabama’s heat wave: A preview of global warming or just a hot spell? | al.com
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama Alabama’s heat wave is just part of the normal climate roller coaster, not global warming, according to state climatologist and University of Alabama in Huntsville climate scientist Dr. John Christy…
“Since (today’s) temperatures aren’t higher than earlier temperatures, it doesn’t look like ‘global warming,'” Christy said, “but more like a problem we still wrestle with: unpredictable natural variability.” Christy said no one knows what causes these natural shifts in climate.
“The heat wave today is primarily natural climate variability,” agreed Dr. William Patzert, an global climate change researcher with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
“But it’s also a preview of coming attractions of what we are contributing to the atmosphere in greenhouse gases, which is definitely gonna heat it up,” Patzert said Friday.
“I am sounding the warning about what global warming will do out into the future,” Patzert said. “If you think it’s hot today, come back and take the temperature on July 6, 2050.” A hot summer day in 2050 or even 2030 could be 115 degrees, Patzert said.
Patzert said the Earth is about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was 129 years ago, when Alabama began keeping the weather records Christy has researched. “The unequivocal proof of that is that much of that warming has gone into the oceans,” Patzert said. “We have seen an 8 inch rise in global sea level.”
…Other climate scientists asked by The Huntsville Times to review Christy’s findings last week also cautioned against linking Alabama’s current climate and “global warming.”
“It is true that one of the few places in the world where temperatures have not exceeded temperatures in the 1930s is the southeastern U.S. (including Alabama),” Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said in an email. “Whether this is due to some oddity in the weather patterns, air pollution effects, irrigation or something else is unclear.”
But Alabama weather over the last 100 years or so has “very little to do with global warming,” Schmidt said. “It certainly isn’t the case that predictions of Alabama temperatures can ignore what’s happening globally,” Schmidt said. “It is just that there is more noise … when you get to the state or local level. ”
Dr. Virginia Sickle-Burkett, chief scientist for global change research with the U.S. Geologic Survey, said in an email that the role of humans in climate change has been demonstrated scientifically.
“Multiple lines of scientific evidence [like what, specifically?] indicate that most of the increase in average global temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to human influences on the atmosphere,” she said. Sickle-Burkett agreed with Schmidt that the Southeast’s climate has been less affected so far, for some reason, but that global warming is real.
Related articles
- The folly of blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming (wattsupwiththat.com)
- An Example Of Media Hype By John Vidale In The Guardian (pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com)
- The Climate of Our Forefathers (valleywx.com)
- The Kevin Trenberth / Seth Borenstein aided fact free folly on the USA heat wave (wattsupwiththat.com)
Thank you for contributing to the discussion, Dr Christy!
Paul K2 says: “He still is averaging the colder winters into the hotter summers, and saying “look, no change over the last 100+ years”.”
This is a completely false statement! What part of June-July-August are you incapable of understanding?
Teacher: “Gavin, where’s your homework assignment??”
Gavin: “I don’t have it….whether this is due to some oddity in the weather patterns, air pollution effects, irrigation or something else is unclear.”
….you can smell a line of B.S. from a mile off.
In Hansen’s famous 1988 scenarios, he projected “greater than average warming” in the SE United States:
See this CA post http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/27/hansen-and-hot-summers-in-the-southeast/ for discussion. (Note that Scenario B is the most reasonable BAU interpretation, not Scenario A which has very high CFC emissions.)
“Jimbo says:
I thought that AGW was supposed to take place at higher latitudes and at night. I must have read some of this wrong.”
Gavin has been quite specific, the one place where you will not find a CO2 driven heating is in Antarctica, especially at higher latitudes and at night.
I asked.
Schmidt said. “It is just that there is more noise … when you get to the state or local level. “
One of my pet peeves with climate scientists, the IPCC, etc, is that they phrase things in ways that mean one thing to non-scientists (including journalists) and another thing to scientists.
What Gavin is saying here is that factors not represented in our models are more important in determining local climate than the factors we do include. Which of course begs the question, what are these factors?
One thing that may bust the whole AGW thing wide open is models that have predictive value at the local/regional level. And we are starting to see such models.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498628
Surprise, surprise, they are aerosol based.
Thanks for that link.
I think you mean “raises the question”, not “begs the question”. “Begging the Question” is the name of the logical fallacy of assuming what you intend to “prove”. For instance: global temperature appears in some series to have risen one degree C. since 1850 & CO2 has risen over 100 ppm since then & humans have contributed some of this CO2 gain to the atmosphere, therefore people are causing the planet to get too hot & we’re all going to die sooner rather than later.
Sorry, just a pedantic pet peeve of mine.
Kevin says:
July 8, 2012 at 3:31 pm
By ‘noise’, Gavin doesn’t mean noise in the recorded temperatures, he means noise in the (claimed) anthropogenic global warming (signal).
See my comment above about climate scientists phrasing things in misleading ways.
Correcting my prior post:
For “…global temperature appears in some series to have risen one degree C. since 1850 & CO2 has risen over 100 ppm since then & humans have contributed some of this CO2 gain to the atmosphere, therefore people are causing the planet to get too hot & we’re all going to die sooner rather than later”, please read: “…global temperature appears in some series to have risen one degree C. since 1690 & CO2 has risen over 100 ppm since then & humans have contributed some of this CO2 gain to the atmosphere, therefore people are causing the planet to get too hot & we’re all going to die sooner rather than later, so we need to tax carbon & breathing & set up a world government to redistribute the funds thus raised”.
I regret the errors.
timetochooseagain wrote: Paul K2 says: “He still is averaging the colder winters into the hotter summers, and saying “look, no change over the last 100+ years”.”
This is a completely false statement! What part of June-July-August are you incapable of understanding?
The data I presented was for the summers. Dr. Christy really avoided looking at the recent 30 years of data on Southeastern states summers. Here is his quote:
“Finally, if starting in 1895 using the average of USHCNv2 TMax for the 11 stations in Interior Alabama, the trends of both my preliminary time series and USHCNv2 are between -0.08 and -0.09 C/decade.”
What part of the statement “Asymmetric Seasonal Temperature Trends” don’t you understand? And if we are addressing summer heat waves, then why aren’t we looking at measures of summer heat?
Paul k2-
“what would be interesting is the temperature record in the last 30 years, say the satellite era. He is carefully avoiding the fact that the summers have gotten hotter,…”
Wrong again. The GHCN summer trend from 1981 to 2009 for Alabama is -0.06 C/decade.
A negative sign means the summer temperatures are dropping, not rising. Except perhaps in Mannland.
“What is the statistical chance of getting the three hottest summers in a consecutive sequence?”
The chances are close to unity when the keeper of the temperature data adjusts the historical records to fabricate fictitious warming.
And by the way, since 1981-
Georgia summers: -0.06 C/decade
Mississippi summers: -0.03 C/decade
North Carolina: +0.01 C/decade
South Carolina: +0.02 C/decade
***…“It certainly isn’t the case that predictions of Alabama temperatures can ignore what’s happening globally,” Schmidt said. “It is just that there is more noise … when you get to the state or local level…***
Well I guess we can ignore all that “noise” we get with states and/or localities setting record temps across the nation, not just the failure to do so in Alabama.
Paul K2 says: “What part of the statement “Asymmetric Seasonal Temperature Trends” don’t you understand? And if we are addressing summer heat waves, then why aren’t we looking at measures of summer heat?”
What part of summer don’t you understand? Look at the plot in Christy’s link. Read the accompanying story if it helps. The data are for summer.
“Dr. Christy really avoided looking at the recent 30 years of data on Southeastern states summers.”
The only part of this that is not totally wrong is the claim that he didn’t look at the last thirty years, but to characterize looking at something close to a hundred more years including that period as “avoiding” look at that period is really bizarre.
So the only vestige of a complaint you have is that Dr Christy didn’t cherry pick the time period over which to calculate the trend to show what you want it to.
@ur momisugly timetochooseagain Paul Klemencic (Paul K2) is hopelessly crazed with the idea (as many of his friends are) that the weather is seriously “out of whack” when in fact it is Paul’s thinking that is out of whack. He’s one of the lost boys. No amount of logic can reach him, much like Al Gore and Bill McKibben. Best you can do is point out to others how hopelessly sucked in he is.
Anthony-I interacted with this guy before on Lucia’s blog. It’s quite clear he believes many incorrect things. I realize it is a waste of time trying to convince him. But I’m not trying to. I’m try to prevent people from getting the impression he isn’t wrong. At some point, of course, you have to be satisfied that you have shown this so that reasonable observers would conclude you “won the argument” or else you will be stuck doing it until the other party tires of the effort. Sadly, it often seems those most persistently in error have the most time to waste on this stuff so have the distinct advantage of being able to “wait you out” on arguments. I, on the other hand, may not be persistently in error, but I do have a lot of free time on my hands! 🙂
That being said, I don’t really feel like continuing this conversation any longer.
Paul K2 says:
July 8, 2012 at 9:20 am
If readers would read the comments at the recent WUWT post “The folly of blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming”, they will find that the recent heat wave is consistent with recent seasonal temperature trends in the NH mid-latitudes. The seasonal trends show the winters and early spring getting cooler, and the summers getting hotter.
You keep banging on about SE US being hotter and that is “global warming.” SE US is not “global!”
No amount of repetition of your claim will make it so.
REPLY: Plus, the SE USA region is seeing a cooling trend in the past 30 years – Anthony
Yes, but after the early effects of human change on the Alabama countryside, followed by the growth of industry, including the steel industry in N. Alabama, what would be interesting is the temperature record in the last 30 years, say the satellite era.
Uh, the steel industry in Alabama has declined markedly in the last 30 years. as for temperatures, when we were kids, living near Birmingham, temperatures never went below 70 degrees from June 1 until September 1 throughout the 1970’s. Temps routinely drop into the high 60’s now at night in the summer.
There seems to be less humidity in north Alabama now than 30-40 years ago and if you grew up there you know that humidity is what keeps the temps up at night. It would be interesting to see the data on this.
Addendum
Here is the weather underground predicted temps for my home town over the next several days.
http://classic.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Graysville,%20Alabama&wuSelect=WEATHER
We would have never had a night below 70 degrees 30-40 years ago and if you look in the lower left at the almanac data you will see that the normal is 70. The record of 102 was in 1930 and the record low of 55 degrees was in the 1950’s.
That is quite a bit of variation over the decades and the high temp yesterday in Graysville of 95 is a full seven degrees below the record.
If AGW is supposed to drive humidity through an indirect effect, there is little evidence of it down south…..
This winter will be interesting with a cold north pacific and an El-Nino….
Gavin showed himself to be a hack quite a while ago (climategate). Why do people care what he says?
Why does Gavin even still have a cushy federal job at GISS? He should long ago have been fired for blogging on the taxpayers’ dime. Same goes for Jimmie Hansen jetting about the globe, making a million or more off his public position.
Anthony, I am using the Climate at a Glance website for NCDC that you recommended in a WUWT post recently:
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
I ran the mean temperature selecting the summer (JJA) option for Alabama.
This is what I got from the NCDC site:
Climate At A Glance
Summer (Jun-Aug) Temperature
Alabama
Some of the following data are preliminary and have not been quality controlled.
For official data, please contact the NCDC Climate Services and Monitoring Division at ncdc.orders@noaa.gov.
Summer (Jun-Aug) 1979 – 2011 Data Values:
Summer (Jun-Aug) 1901 – 2000 Average = 79.00 degF
Summer (Jun-Aug) 1979 – 2011 Trend = 0.47 degF / Decade
The site also shows the Rank of the summer temperatures by year (with 117 being hottest, and 1 being coldest).
Alabama had the hottest summer in history in 2010 according to this site (Rank 117). And 2011 was the sixth hottest in history (Rank 112).
Georgia hottest summers: 1st is 2010, 2nd is 2011
S.C. hottest summers: 1st is 2010, 2nd is 2011
Mississippi hottest summers: 1st is 2010, 2nd is 2011
…. and so forth.
I followed your instructions, reported back the results, and have been trashed on this thread.
You claim that recent years haven’t shown a warming trend. Yet the NCDC shows the trend over the satellite era is 0.47 degF per decade.
What did I do wrong?
And now some meteorologists are talking about their latest theories in the press. Here is a quote from an news article in England:
And what a summer. More than twice the average rainfall hit the UK in April. June was the wettest since records began, and the start of July has seen a month’s rain fall in 24 hours in some parts of the south-west.
The bad weather has stuck and shows little sign of shifting, according to Helen Chivers at the Met Office. “The jet stream can get bends in it, it can get distorted, which can move us into a blocked pattern, like the dry weather we saw in winter … and the wet weather we are seeing now.”
What is affecting these changes in the jet stream is the million-dollar question, said Chivers. Variations could be caused by temperature changes in the Pacific, but meteorologists are also studying how shifts in the Earth’s temperature, caused by global warming, affect weather conditions.
“A lot of work is being done into the decrease in Arctic sea ice,” said Chivers. “Essentially, if you warm up a sea, you change the temperature differential between the poles and the tropics and that in turn influences the jet stream. Research has already shown the influence on north-west Europe winters, making them drier and colder, but what happens in the summer is still relatively unknown.”
Britain’s geographical placement means variable weather is something we will have to get used to. With the Atlantic on one side and Europe on the other, where our wind comes from can make a dramatic difference. “That’s why in May we were seeing fine, dry weather and people were talking about drought, and not long after the concern was flooding,” said Chivers.
So can we expect to see more wet summers in the (dreary) future? Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, said the recent bad weather could be ascribed to the natural variability of the weather. “But climate change could be making things worse, because the globally warmer atmosphere now carries 4% more moisture over the oceans than in the 1970s and this could be leading to increased rainfall in weather systems.”
The only aspect of the impact of climate change on the weather that most academics would agree on is the need for more research.
“One of the challenges for attribution science is to better diagnose such weather events and be able to attribute any changed risk of heatwaves, flooding, etc, more accurately,” said Stott.
David Jones wrote: Paul K2 says:
If readers would read the comments at the recent WUWT post “The folly of blaming the Eastern U.S. heat wave on global warming”, they will find that the recent heat wave is consistent with recent seasonal temperature trends in the NH mid-latitudes. The seasonal trends show the winters and early spring getting cooler, and the summers getting hotter.
You keep banging on about SE US being hotter and that is “global warming.” SE US is not “global!”
No amount of repetition of your claim will make it so.
REPLY: Plus, the SE USA region is seeing a cooling trend in the past 30 years – Anthony
Sigh, David Jones, I am not primarily discussing global warming. I am talking about recent theories proposed by meteorologists tying changes in the NH jet stream to Arctic ice pack loss and loss of NH snow cover. We may disagree on what initiated the decline of the ice pack, but the fact is that even WUWT now agrees that a significant loss of ice extent will occur this year (to less than 4.5 million sq km).
So what does that do to the jet stream? Changes in the jet stream are causing prolonged weather patterns leading to droughts, heat waves, precipitation events, and winter cold spells in the NH.
Looking at temperature trends for mid-latitude NH land areas is one way to review the impact. If the jet stream stalls repeatedly in the same longitude, we would not just get a hot week; we would get a hot summer. This year a blocking pattern caused an abnormally warm March in the US Midwest. And now a similar blocking event has caused a serious heat wave. If this trend keeps up, this summer could be one of the hottest on records for the Midwest and Southeast US. Accompanying this heat wave is a serious drought developing in sections of the country east of the Rockies. West of the Rockies where I currently live, the weather has been cooler than normal because of the jet stream pattern.
The commenters on this thread dispute the NCDC finding that recent summers in the Southeast have shown a warming trend. They disagree with the NCDC finding that the summer of 2010 was the hottest summer ever in the Southeast US.
Ok… I searched for Southeast summer heat wave 2010. First hit I got, was a report from two agronomists working for the USGA. Here is their report:
http://www.usga.org/course_care/regional_updates/regional_reports/southeast/Summer-Heat-Wave-Facts—August-2010/
Is the USGA is left leaning organization like the Union of Concerned Scientists? Are these agronomists part of the “bad scientists” discussed here at WUWT?
They say the summer of 2010 was very hot.
Wood For Trees shows that it’s been warmer during the past 35 years. That is based on satellite data [by far the most accurate].
Cherry-picking Alabama or the British Isles isn’t science. It’s, well… cherry-picking. Just like cherry-picking the Arctic while ignoring the Antarctic, which has ten times more ice. Gavin is just trying to misdirect from global temperatures.
Globally, temperatures are completely normal, and well within past parameters.
Smokey: I didn’t cherry pick Alabama; the reporter for the Huntsville Times asked Gavin Schmidt to compare Alabama’s recent high temperatures during the heat wave to climatology. I suggested earlier that its too bad he didn’t ask a knowledgeable meteorologist instead of a climatologist who isn’t likely to know the latest analyses and theories in the field of meteorology (study of weather and weather patterns).
But the commenters here say the US Southeast isn’t experiencing hotter summers. The NCDC site disagrees. I encourage any reader here to go to the Climate at a Glance site, select Regional, then US Southeast and Mean Temperature, and all the years since 1895. The site will show 2010 as the hottest summer in the records (Rank 117), and 2011 as the second hottest summer ever in the US Southeast (Rank 116).
And this year is on a course to compete for the top spot.
Paul K2, I would only ask you to look at the UNADJUSTED temperature records before climatologists got their hands on them. Would 2010 have been the hottest year on record if it was versus unadjusted data from the 30’s? I don’t know the answer and am not motivated enough to look for it…but I am quite curious as to the answer.
Sickle-Burkett errs in stating that “tthe role of humans in climate change has been demonstrated scientifically.” In the absence of the underlying statistical population, the role of humans cannot have been demonstrated but there is no such population.