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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Pat raises a fair point that CWG would have been more thorough to examine multiple stations rather than just the “official” record for DC (which includes Reagan National, and predecessor sites in the District). We used the official DCA record because that’s what the local NWS uses for records and what we had time to analyze. But for the future, we’ll try to look at multiple sites.
Note: when Pat says “at the very least, [CWG] 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.” I think we were clear about this. Note this excerpt from the blog post of ours that Pat critiques:
“Caveat
“Comparison of modern Washington, D.C. temperature data from Reagan National Airport with data prior to the 1940s – when temperatures were measured near Georgetown – is complicated. The two observing stations have different environments and both areas experienced population growth and urbanization over time.
“Due to the effect of urbanization and the station move to Reagan National (a somewhat warmer, lower elevation location), it’s likely somewhat “easier” to set warm records now versus earlier decades – especially for low temperatures. Thus, the 1930 and 2012 comparison above is not exactly apples to apples”
Pat makes a VERY good point about the records at DC. and yes there has been some awful ” reporting : ( if one can call it that) by the main stream media about this heat wave and AGW. That being said Pat’s point about the 1930s is NOT relevant. The problem with this argument … which conservatives ignore… is that the warmth of 1930s or say 500 years ago ..does not prove or disprove that the current warming is or is not Human drive or Human induced.
It may be warmth of 1930s may indeed have some bearing on the silly argument that the current warmth is Unprecedented . But based on what Pat presents here… that is not supported .
Oldfossil
What is your problem? I am merely stating what is in Shein’s paper! Further, I have a bit more information, thanks to Karsten Shein, namely that they are looking at SC and GA to see if they re-set the record in the last heat wave, and that he thinks that the DC record will yield results similar to what we detailed in our response to Capital Weather.
To all citing the “length of record” issue: If climate data is a random variable with a normal distribution, then the chance of an individual year being a record is 1/n, where n is the number of years. It doesn’t matter if there are, say, 40, i.e. in 1936, or 115, i.e. now. Prior data have no influence on the present. If they did, you could make a killing at any crap game.
BTW, to remove some of the “heat” from this discussion, I suggest that everyone go back to see how Capital Weather took great pains during the 2009-10 snow season to check all of the DC records. They noted the problems with the “official” station moves then, and all both of us (CWG and yours truly) are doing is to remind everyone of the multiple station problem when claiming records.
May I reiterate that the remarkable findings in Shein are that the early statewide records are so robust and how they haven’t been beaten by urbanization?
Seeing as the jump was so high from previous decades (1920s, 1910s etc), the 1930s was a decade full of extreme hot record-breakers.
Here is the annual temperature plot for the contiguous USA.
Annual time series from 1900
Clearly the US has warmed over the period, and while the 30s was a hot decade nationally, it’s not as hot as the last of decade.
Now look at the time series for just the month of June to present.
Time series plot month of June from 1900
Whoa! Suddenly the 30s appear to be hotter than recent.
July 2012 isn’t available yet, so we’ll plot July values up to 2011.
Time series plot month of July to 2011
For July, the 30s seem to be about on par with the most recent decade.
It seems that summertime temps in the 1930s for the contiguous US were comparable to recent, even while that decade was cooler than the most recent.
It is quite possible there were more maximum temp records broken recently in cities and towns nationally than in the 1930s. But to discern that, you’d need to make an apples to apples comparison.
From March 2012, according to NCDC:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/3/
Similar for June (170 records broken).
A single location within a state may experience some freak weather event causing a massive temp spike well above the normal maximum and this is likelier to occur wherever the state is warmest in general. This is the NCDC data Michaels uses. But records may be broken in other parts of the state that don’t get recorded simply because the record isn’t the hottest in the state.
It will be interesting to compare again when the July data are all in.
barry, I charted the year with the warmest month for each state using NOAA data.
March did set a lot of warmest month records.
April and May set none. June set 1 – Colorado.
All of the blue squares were in the last 10 months. All of the yellow were before 2000,
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/noaa-warmest-months-for-each-state-june-2012-edition/
And I believe some or all of this data is heavily adjusted upwards.
And I think there are almost as many set in the 1895 to 1899 as there were in 2012 so far.
Correction – “last 10 months” should be “last 12 months”.
In simpler words, Michaels is referring to a data set where 24 maximum temp records were broken in the 30s (that may or may not have been broken this July). But nationally, the US is recently seeing hundreds and even thousands of records broken in some months.
Point of interest: most of the records broken during the 30s were in 1936. Must have been a freakishly hot summer that year.
Amendment – I noticed there were some states that had more than one record-breaker. That doesn’t impact much on my point.
sunshine,
Good job on the chart.
Those are the hottest all time records for one (or a couple of ties) place in each state. It’s still not an apples to apples comparison. It may well be that there are more hot records being set recently, but they may be located at cooler regions in each state, and therefore don’t show up in the NCDC database you’re using. Much more data is needed to compare with the recent incidence of record-breakers throughout the US.
barry: “Those are the hottest all time records for one (or a couple of ties) place in each state.”
No. Those are highest state average temperatures for each month.
I think it is interesting that 10 out of the 48 states have 1895 or 1896 as the warmest May. 7 have April as the warmest in the 1890s. 5 Septembers in the 1890s.
Imagine how warm it could have been before 1895.
Ok, you’re using a different metric from Michaels.
Out of interest, I tallied up all the record-breakers for the 1930s (in keeping with the subject of this thread) and then the last 10 years, using your chart.
1930 to 1939 = 115 record-breakers
2003 to 2012 = 129 record-breakers
Of course, we’re only half-way through 2012.
(I’d be glad for you to double check. It’s possible I miscounted)
1890 to 1899 = 35 record-breakers
I see that the records do not extend before 1895, so I tallied up the decade from that year.
1895 to 1904 = 49 record-breakers
Steve Mosher in another (later) thread here
As for times before 1979? it doesnt really matter one way or the other. world is getting warmer, you can expect expect less arctic ice..
@michaelspj, on the ncdc site I looked at about 20 data tables. Every single one of these tables shows rising temperatures and (where applicable) a hot 2001-2010 decade; every table but one. That one table was used to generate the chart I’m complaining about.
America is the only nation in the world where it is a fundamental tenet of Christianity that the theory of evolution is false. I went to a Catholic school, not in America, and we were taught evolution. We were taught that it is perfectly compatible with Christianity. To the rest of the world, American fundamental Christians look stupid.
Of all the climate skeptic pages on the net, this is the only one where it is a fundamental tenet that there is no warming. (No I lie, there’s also the somewhat fanatical C3 page.) I don’t see why WUWT followers have chosen such a shaky platform to fight on. Rising global temperatures are perfectly compatible with the CAGW-skeptic position. The skeptic does not accept unproven claims that the warming is anthropogenic; the skeptic has evidence (from verified historical records not hypothetical computer models) that a warm planet is a happy planet. That’s a pretty strong place to be. Why compromise your stance by getting into a futile controversy over the temperature records? It’s not essential to the skeptic argument, and even if you are one hundred per cent right, John Public is not going to believe you without a lot of convincing, and John Public hasn’t got the patience for that. You are making yourselves look ridiculous.
oldfossil: “Of all the climate skeptic pages on the net, this is the only one where it is a fundamental tenet that there is no warming. ”
It warms and cools.
These are the number of warmest months for the continental 48 states. And the data is heavily adjusted to favor recent years.
189x 29
190x 30
191x 37
192x 42
193x 99
194x 38
195x 53
196x 37
197x 12
198x 37
199x 42
200x 69
201x 51
Supposedly CO2 caused a lot of warming after 1950.
When all the pre-1950 warmest months are gone, then you can tell me it is warming.
OK. The chart shows ALL TIME temperature records – not just temperature records from starting point up until that decade. Otherwise, the first decade would set every record, and there would be a declining number of records subsequently. A random distribution of data for ALL TIME records would produce a flat line, whereas a random distribution of data of breaking the record to date would produce the declining trend tending towards zero that you imagine.
No. My understanding of this is that a new all-time record replaces the previous all-time record within a particular data series. Thus there is only ever one all-time record in each data series. Therefore examining a dataset for all-time records examines all the data points for a particular series and picks out the (highest) record from that series. Thus there is a fixed number of all-time records distributed across the years (decades), and would produce a flat line for random data. When a new record is set, that becomes the new all-time record, eliminating the one it supercedes.
Oldfossil,
If you would actually do some background work you would find that most of the scientists trained in relevant fields who blog on thie site in fact do agree that the surface temperature has warmed. The argument is not about the heat, it is about the sensitivity–and peculiarites like the paucity of statewide records in recent years. If all of this is true, it is another victory for the “lukewarmers”.
So, at the outset you are dead wrong about WUWT, which leads me to believe you have some other ax to grind. Given that, why are you writing here?
oldfossil says:
July 16, 2012 at 3:42 am
America is the only nation in the world where it is a fundamental tenet of Christianity that the theory of evolution is false.
Christianity is not a monolithic block in America. I had a Catholic education and was taught that religion and science do not conflict, because the former is based on faith and the latter on evidence.
Of all the climate skeptic pages on the net, this is the only one where it is a fundamental tenet that there is no warming.
It’s been warming since the LIA, and I doubt you’ll find any posts or comments disputing that. Did you mean to say that pretty much everyone here is in agreement with the empirical observations that there hasn’t been *increased* warming lately?
Curious to know if this ‘forgotten’ record continues back in sunspot records? The energy outburst of all the sun’s bodies make a permanent record in the sun, sort of like grandma’s photo album showing you in your bonnet and booties. So, I would like to find a site that expains how long these energy events last –probably related to energy input. So could the explosion of the northern hemisphere of the sun Jan 2012 be a ‘reflection’ record of an energy event in the past?
I am not getting this chart, I can go to HAMweather and see all kinds of record highs for July 16, 2010 alone:
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/custom/us.html?c=maxtemp&s=20100716
What’s the deal?
REPLY: The deal is that you are confusing all time high records per state, with daily high records per station – Anthony
Please note there have been no records broken for the last 12 years.
Charles,
Michaels appears to have found the one metric where this is so – maximum temp record-breakers for specific location(s) in each state.
In 2012 alone there have been 7000+ maximum temp records broken in locations across the US, mostly in March.
Maximum temps records for each state in the US (not specific locations but for the whole state) have been broken 129 times since 2003, according to this excellent data presentation by sunshine, posted above. Same database as Michaels – NOAA.
As far as I can see, no other decade has broken as many records. The 1930s had 115, probably the closest.
I don’t accuse Michales of cherry-picking datasets. Perhaps that was the first one he came across and he simply stopped looking.
barry, “Maximum temps records for each state in the US (not specific locations but for the whole state) have been broken 129 times since 2003”
No. The mean temperature record for a month for a state has been set 120 times since 2000.
I will not vouch for the data other than the NOAA claims it is accurate. They do a lot of adjusting.
There are 576 state monthly records. 456 were set before 2000. 29 were set in the 1890s.
275 were set before 1950 (which is when CO2 supposedly really started to effect climate)
Considering how big UHI really is (which I think was the point of this article) and considering the bug adjustments, it is amazing so many old records have never been broken.