The Heat Was On—Before Urbanization and Greenhouse Gases
By Patrick Michaels on World Climate Report
Sure is hot out! And what better time for a paper to appear in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology describing the construction of the “all-time” records for various types of weather extremes for each of the 50 United States plus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The paper details efforts of the U.S. State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC) established by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and led by Dr. Karsten Shein. Basically, the SCEC dusted off old records and found other new sources. So now we have “new and improved” data (available here) for the value, the date and the location of the all-time high and low temperature, greatest 24-hr precipitation, greatest 24-hr snowfall and greatest snowdepth for 50 states and two territories. The statewide record extremes have been updated through 2011 and are subject to continuous updating.
This paper is an interesting read for those who perseverate on climate history and how it is constructed from a variety of observations both made from “official” (federal) observing stations as well as those deemed reliable from “non-official” observations (such as 12-oz soda bottles or credible “amateur” observer accounts). The new effort resulted in “the revision of 40 percent of the values” contained in the old dataset at NCDC and “underscored both the necessity of manual quality assurance methods as well as the importance of continued climate monitoring and data rescue activities to ensure that potential record values are not overlooked.”
It also is useful for putting the recent heat wave in perspective. Despite the 24/7 caterwauling, only two new state records—South Carolina and Georgia—are currently under investigation. And, looking carefully at Shein et al. dataset, there appears to be a remarkable lack of all-time records in recent years.
This is particularly striking given the increasing urbanization of the U.S. and the consequent “non climatic” warming that creeps into previously pristine records. Everything else being equal—and with no warming from increased greenhouse gases—most statewide records should be in or near big cities. But they aren’t.
This year there were a huge number (many thousands) of reports of daily high temperature records being set across the eastern two-thirds of the country in recent weeks, and even a large number (a few hundred) reports of all-time records high temperatures being set for a particular location. But if only two new statewide records were set, that’s hardly an historic heat wave when considered in its totality.
In Table 1, below, we list the all-time record daily maximum temperature observed in each of the 52 entries (as compiled by the SCEC) and the date and location where it was recorded. Notice that the vast majority of the all-time records were set more than half a century ago and that there are exceedingly few records set within the past few decades. This is not the picture that you would expect if global warming from greenhouse gas emissions were the dominant forcing of the characteristics of our daily weather. Instead, natural variability is still holding a strong hand.
Table 1. All-time statewide maximum temperatures (from NCDC)
In Table 2, we’ve compiled the top five years when the most records were set. When multiple years tie for the high, each individual year gets a fraction of a “record”. So, for example, 1954 and 1933 each get a half of a record for Colorado.
Table 2.
But this doesn’t stop people from implying that last week’s heat wave as an indication that global warming is leading to unprecedented conditions.
Capital Weather Gang (CWG)—the popular and respected weather blog for conditions in and around Washington DC, and one which is closely watched by the media, was quite vocal all about all-time records of one sort or another being set in our Nation’s Capital during last week’s heat wave.
If the Shein et al. methodology is applied to DC’s temperatures, then CWG’s very public pronouncements (they were picked up on the Drudge Report) are not all going to stand. That’s because CWG relied only on a single record, while largely ignoring the comprehensive set of observations historically taken within the geographical boundaries of the District of Columbia. The single record used by CWG is the “official” version of the Washington DC daily temperature which is a record which has been stitched together from observations made at National Airport (from 1945 through the present), which by the way is not even in the District of Columbia, and from observations taken at a Weather Bureau location at 24th and M street (1889 through 1944, and other locations prior to then). But when the records were concurrent (which they were during the 1940s and 1950s), only one is included (DCA).
If you really wanted to establish all-time records for Washington DC, you’d have to consider all available records that are credible—rather than relying on a data for a single “station.”
That’s what Shein et al. did. Although the SCEC has not yet compiled the all-time weather records for Washington DC, the word is that they are in the process of doing so, and are considering all available observations.
The CWG should do the same when discussing records for “Washington DC”. Or at the very least, they must be very clear that they are discussing a single (changing) location (i.e., Reagan National Airport, the downtown City Office, etc.) rather than Washington DC as a whole.
Here is an example of how things can go awry.
According to CWG, the recent heat wave “Washington D.C.” tied its record for the longest string of consecutive days in which the daily high temperature was 100°F or above. According to the CWG, the record was/is 4 days set in 1930 and 2012. However, in July/August 1953, 5 days in a row with temperatures of 100+°F were observed at the old Weather Bureau observing station at the City Office. These observations were from “an” official weather station within DC but not part of “the” “official” stitched together record. If the NCDC SCEC were compiling all-time strings of consecutive days of 100+°F, they most certainly would consider the old City Office records (including during the time of overlap with DCA observations), something that the Capital Weather Gang opted not to do.
Whether or not additional examination would alter any of the other “all-time” temperature that the Capital Weather Gang identified as being broken in “Washington DC” during the recent heat wave is unknown at this time.
One lesson here is that when considering “all-time” extreme weather records for a particular region, a comprehensive study must be undertaken (as described by Shein et al.) rather than simply deferring to a single station record.
The other take-home is that one has to be very careful about attributing the recent extreme temperatures to dreaded global warming. As noted above, there are surprisingly few all-time state records in recent years. Further, a look at their table indicates that only one of these—Providence RI, in 1975—comes from a city. Somehow—and this seems impossible—the dreaded greenhouse effect cannot raise already climbing urban temperatures to state record levels.
We can thank the SCEC for helping to do most of the dirty work in establishing an accurate dataset of all-time statewide record extremes for the United States that can be relied upon into the future, so that accurate assessments can be made when comparing current extreme weather events to past ones.
Reference:
Shein, K., D. Todey, F. Akyuz, J. Angel, T. Kearns, and J. Zdrojewski, 2012. Evaluating Statewide Climate Extremes for the United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, doi:10.1175/JAMC-D-11-0226.1, in press.
Related articles
- A Big Picture Look At “Earth’s Temperature” – 2nd Quarter, 2012 – “What Global Warming Looks Like” Update (wattsupwiththat.com)
- 100s in the 30s: Think last week was hot? (wjla.com)
- After pointing out an airplane got stuck in heat softened asphalt, Al Gore misses the fact that many of the surface temperatures used in climate come from airports
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We in the UK have suffered a very cold, wet and windy May, June and so far July. Flash floods have been common. This is due to the Southerly positioning of the jet stream. But, of course, the warmists are blaming it on AGW. Unfortunately our Met Office has yet to carry out a search of
relevant records that might show if and when similar conditions have arisen in the past.
I’m surprised that an alarmist hasn’t bothered to mention that US weather is local not global.
michael hart says:
July 15, 2012 at 1:36 am
How is any statistical bias based on the number of observations dealt with? I would guess that in modern times there might be more observations made, even if this is due to simply having a larger population. Is this the case?
——————————————————————————–
Yes, these factors would lead to more records, both cool and warm. And it would be good to know how many of the all time recorde are from a station operating for the entire period, instead of creating complicated questionable statistics, and dozens of debatable fudge factors. it is far better to do for the entire record, what Steve Goddard did here….
…From Steve Goddard…
” There are 901 USHCN stations which were operating during both 1930 and 2011. Out of those stations, eighty-nine percent set their all time July 14 maximum temperature record with CO2 below 350 ppm.
Thirty-eight percent (347) set their all time July 14 record during the 1930s and eighteen percent (162) set their all-time July 14 record during the 1950s.
Only three stations have set their all time July 14 record during the current decade.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/89-of-us-july-14-high-temperature-records-were-set-below-350-ppm-co2/
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but is this not missing the obvious – it was easier to set temperature records in the 30’s because the temperature record had only been running for about 40 years. Surely it is harder to set them today because there are 120 years of records to beat?
Yes, it does appear that the 30’s were a decade with some extremes of temperature, but some sort of normalisation needs to be applied to account for the fact that the existing temperature record was so much shorter back then.
Warmest ever? Maybe, maybe not: http://wp.me/pnsGM-df
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past decade it’s that there’s a lot of people who aren’t interested in data, they are only interested in their own self-interest.
You see it in politics with parties of all hues transposing onto their opponents their own grubby behaviour (be that Tories/Labour to Libdems in the UK currently; Democrat/Republican to Republican/Democrat at pretty much all times in the US). Truth goes out the window, but if you repeat the lie often enough and loud enough, enough people are fool enough to believe it.
You see it in climate change.
You see it in the nature/nurture debate in biology (although that’s pretty close to politics when it comes to the attitudinal states of the brain as a result of childhood).
You see it in the GM crop ‘debate’ (trench warfare is a more accurate description of that pair of interests-based protagonists).
As a person who can’t win fights by thuggery, I’ve never behaved that way and until recently I couldn’t understand why others did. Now I realise it’s their way of gaining/retaining influence/wealth.
I wouldn’t be surprised by what you describe: I’d describe it as situation normal.
What you need to monitor is whether any approach you use to overcome it is actually successful.
Unfortunately we have our own idiots over here in the UK. David Attenborough was reported as saying that the cold, wet non-summer we’re having in the UK is due to global warming.
In March the Met Office forecast for the next quarter was that most likely it would be warm and dry (at the time much of the country was warm and experiencing drought). In fact the summer has been extremely wet and very cool, exactly the opposite of the Met Office quarterly forecast – and the exact opposite of their climate predictions. In other words, yet another BBQ summer. They never seem to learn.
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In today’s Sunday Telegraph Christopher Booker lists some UK extreme weather events going back many decades, including Lynmouth (34 people killed) and the North Sea flood (307 people killed in England alone). Both of these occurred in 1952. If you go back into the Little Ice Age some storms in England and Europe each killed 100,000 people (from H.H.Lamb) and one storm killed 400,000.
Perhaps Attenborough should look at the actual data, rather than newspaper headlines. Unfortunately we’re being forced to pay for this lunacy through inflated energy bills.
Chris
Oh very, very funny.
Please put the 2000’s in the bar chart. It stops at the 1990’s. I WONDER why that is. I do understand that you can’t put the 2010’s in yet, however the records in the 2010’s are comprehensively breaking the records set in the 1930’s.
Oh and whilst the 1930’s broke a LOT or earler levels, if you take the 1930’s out of the picture, then the 2010’s will be breaking ALL of the records and have a bar much higher than the 1930’s.
Another point is that the 1930’s were fuelled by “No you DIDN’T guess it”. Global Warming. Global warming is not a 21st century phenomena, it’s been going on “industrially” for 200 years.
Nice try but I’m not buying it.
It was pretty bloody hot in the US in the 30’s. I hope it never gets that hot again.
Simon Wood … you’re not wrong … and add the fact that the recent records break the records set then! I fail to understand the logic of comments in this thread, but then I guess that must make me a “warmist”?
NeilT: “Please put the 2000′s in the bar chart”
There isn’t any. 2006 tied a record set 1936.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0177435abda6970d-pi
Some 30s extreme weather from Canada not surpassed (and apparently not hidden away):
http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=6A4A3AC5-1
•The Deadliest Heat Wave in History – July 5-17, 1936. Temperatures exceeding 44°C in Manitoba and Ontario claimed 1,180 Canadians (mostly the elderly and infants) during the longest, deadliest heat wave on record. Four hundred of these deaths were caused by people who drowned seeking refuge from the heat. In fact, the heat was so intense that steel rail lines and bridge girders twisted, sidewalks buckled, crops wilted and fruit baked on trees.
•Hottest Day on Record – July 5, 1937. The highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was reached at Midale and Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan when the mercury soared to 45°C.
•Ontario’s Coldest Day on Record – December 29, 1933. Fourteen sites recorded their coldest-ever temperature, including Ottawa at -38.9°C and Algonquin Park at -45.0°C. Outside Ontario, record cold temperatures were also set in Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia.
•Cold Wave Grips Eastern North America – February 1934. A cold wave engulfed the continent from Manitoba to the Atlantic seaboard and down the east coast to Palm Beach, Florida. Ice trapped fishing vessels off Nova Scotia, hospitals were jammed with frostbite victims and, for only the second time in recorded history, Lake Ontario froze completely over.
Dave Worley on June 14 you associated Warmists with atheists and liberals.
If that’s the general attitude on this site then I’d say it was agenda-driven, wouldn’t you?
I’m a “born again” climate skeptic having recently “converted” from the climate change religion. But as a genuine skeptic I don’t swallow anyone’s BS even when I agree with their outlook on the whole.
For example, we have had many articles and comments on this site saying that global warming is actually a Good Thing. Being an emergence from the Little Ice Age it will re-open high latitude areas to habitation and agriculture. Then we have other articles and comments saying that no warming is happening at all.
We can’t have it both ways, people. We’re making ourselves look bloody stupid. Which is it going to be? Is global climate moving into a beneficial interglacial Warm Period, or is warming just a myth? Make up your minds.
PS I’m a devout atheist.
The worst droughts to hit North America in the last 800 years occured during the 17th Century during the coldest decades of the LIA. And these droughts occured along the Eastern Seaboard and not the Great Plains. Dr. David Stahle of the University of Arkansas studies of North American Cyrpess trees uncovered some fascinating information concerning the climate of the Tidewater States. Early Spanish missionairies attempted to set up a mission in Virginia, but had to abandon their settlement due to lack of rain and excessive heat (They eventually found a place to settle in present day Saint Augustine Florida). Later, came the English settlers, who suffered during the worst years of the drought. From1008-1624 over half of the 8000 settlers at Jamestown starved due to the severe drought. Little to no rain fell during the years 1606-1609 and again during the early 1620s.
What is interesting is the fact that this drought occured during some of the coldest decades on the globe during the last 1000 years.
Why does the graph at the top of this page stop in the year 2000? Is it NOAA unable to report the last decade’s data, over a year later? Or has the graph been drawn specifically to exclude the 2000’s?
REPLY: It doesn’t. You’ve misinterpreted what the graph is. This is about all time record high temperatures by state per decade. Note the there’s no data in the 2000’s, (i.e. no new records ) just as there are none in the 190’s and 1960’s – Anthony
I’ve always been vaguely irritated by the drama queen squealing that the current weather is “all mankinds fault” because there are newspaper reports from the late 1920’s and mid 1930’s saying very similar things to the pro CAGW factions of today.
Those who do not study history……
I also posted several times on HDD and CDD histories. Many power companies have collected that information for decades to help them do load planning, as heating and cooling requirements follow HDD abd CDD quite closely. That same information is also used by mechanical engineers in heating and cooling design calculations to plan air handling systems for buildings. I would be very very surprised if there are not extensive tables of such information in older books aimed at the heating and cooling industry that could be harvested.
Likewise I also posted that official weather service temperatures were parallel recorded in local newspapers, as each day the newspapers would publish the most recent daily high temperature and often published stories about weather such as “we just missed breaking the record high of xx set in 18xx”. A diligent research effort to go through newspaper archives would I am sure totally blow the current “adjusted” temperature records out of the water as there is no way they can remove or adjust data that was published in public records like the major newspapers decades ago. All that data is just sitting there in your local libraries.
Even a volunteer project like the surface station audit could assemble historical temperature records from library microfilm archives of local news papers.
More importantly it would also help document the historic movements in locations for the temperatures of record. For example here in Colorado the local official temperature has been taken in several locations. Comparing the old Stapleton National Weather Service temperatures to the current measurements now made out at DIA is comparing apples and oranges, not to mention the older measurements made in down town Denver up until 1949, prior to the move to Stapleton
At the Weather Underground you find that the weather station location has moved 3 times in the last century.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/PCG/comment.html?entrynum=23
Those three locations are different micro climates. Downtown Denver is at the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry creek drainages and sits in a shallow river valley. At the time the core city was relatively small with few skyscrapers and abundant watered lawns and trees through out the central Denver Metro area.
Stapleton was located to the North west on higher ground, at the time near the edge of the green Metro area with lots of trees in the nearby metro neighborhoods but transitioning onto an open plains environment with most of the ground to the north east open grass plains prairie. After the construction of I70 in the late 1960’s and expansions of the runways, the Stapleton weather station has concrete runways and a major highway on 3 sides of it.
Now DIA sits out on the high plains in totally barren high plains prairie with a distinct lack of local shading or local lawn watering or trees. In the summer time when the wind is calm this area turns into an oven. The Location of the old record high of 118 degrees claimed for Bennet is just a few miles south east of DIA.
Larry
NeilT
You can simply look at the table to count the number of daily records afterr 1999. It is a grand total of 0.5–a tie in South Dakota. You wouldn’t be able to see the bar in a bar chart.
NeilT says:
July 15, 2012 at 5:18 am
Please put the 2000′s in the bar chart. It stops at the 1990′s. I WONDER why that is. I do understand that you can’t put the 2010′s in yet, however the records in the 2010′s are comprehensively breaking the records set in the 1930′s.
Better contact NOAA and tell them you think their records are wrong, then.
Oh and whilst the 1930′s broke a LOT or earler levels, if you take the 1930′s out of the picture, then the 2010′s will be breaking ALL of the records and have a bar much higher than the 1930′s.
As long as you look at it that way, take the past hundred years’ out of the picture — look at all the records that 2012 would set!
Thanks for posting. The logic of the color graph needs explanation, since “all time records” would logically tend to be broken at a lesser rate over time – unless you have more temperature-gathering stations and more temperature gatherers. If either of these statements is true, this graph is an absurdity.
The bulk of climate lies and deception has reached dangerous levels!
Thhey havent really thougt of what the conseqvenses will be people dont like to be lied to and they react in different ways. when they find out. How can NASA just watch GISS to drag its reputation down in mud? There are now miljons all ower the world who has become dependent of this climate fraud Its important that they get a fair chance to be able to get off this gravy¨train before it will kill everyone ombord when the wheels allredy has lsot contact with the rails!
I’ve been searching the NCDC site and I have to say that Patrick Michaels seems to have cherry-picked the data for his chart. Multiple other datasets show different results. What is going on?
When you think about the size of the world (which we have been lulled into believing it is the size of a marble, or maybe a bowling ball, depending on the size of the book depicting the Earth), and all the days of the year, and all the sensor locations, which translates into all the opportunities to set records, random chance would dictate that occasionally and for no special catastrophic reason, records will be set. Yawn.
So if the AGW hypothesis is correct, those exact same sensors, minus any UHI, should have been the same ones that recorded this most recent record and at the same point in the season. Each sensor should have recorded an even hotter high temp. And each successive year, continued to record higher temps. Else they are simply recording weather events, nothing more.
oldfossil says:
July 15, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Did you follow the link (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/searchrecs.php) to the NOAA/NCDC climate extremes section? It’s all presented nice and simple. I can’t see where you think it is cherry picking. Patrick Michaels simply put the data in a colourful and evocative little chart.