US record lows outpace record highs 127 to 4 this weekend

One day we are all freezing to death due to global warming?!

Ahh! OK… “Never Mind!” as that SNL gal used to say. The yellow dots for those cities are tiny ones, not quite the same as the slightly larger yellow circles. No idea though why the mapmaker would pick out a seemingly random dozen moderately large cities to name on the map.
– MJM

DRAFT
For immediate press release from NASA (National Alarmist Subsidy Administration):
The record cold weather was predicted by the models and is consistent with global warming “weirding” the weather. As CO2 continues to assert its control over the weather [insert gobbledygook], therefore we must re-double our efforts to send energy costs to unprecedented levels.

michaeljmcfadden says:
August 20, 2012 at 3:28 am
Am I reading the map incorrectly? It would appear that there were “high minimum temps” in Bismarck, Denver, Raleigh, NY, Portland, Chicago … why would there be HMTs in just those major cities?…
_________________________________
I do not know about the other cities but RDU (Raleigh/Durham Airport) was discussed HERE. When I checked early this morning at 4:12 AM RDU was reading 2 to 4 degrees F higher than the surrounding area. It is also part of the climate record and seems to be labeled Raleigh. They also painted the blacktop around the station white after 2010 (experiment perhaps?)
Right now it is 68F with a light rain in Raleigh, directly south in Chapel hill (small airport) it is 67F, south of that in Moncure (very rural) it is 67F at 737 AM.
With a lot of black top at airports a higher minimum especially where it is humid would be expected. Notice you are seeing the high minimums along the seacoasts. Houston TX is well known for being a steam bath. With the purging of the temperature stations, The ‘Station drop out’ problem from 1990 onward until the number was reduced from 7250 to about 1900 in 1992 and further to about 960 stations in 2006 a lot of the rural stations got dropped.
According to Smith, there’s also been an affinity for retaining airport stations over other kinds of stations. His count shows 92% of GHCN stations in the USA are sited at airports, with about 41% worldwide.
Do not tell me these turkeys couldn’t find nice rural stations like the one at Moncure used to be (Old Chestnut Crossing). Heck nearby Sandford and Pittsboro (12 miles west and south) have recently been moved to the newly built “Raleigh Executive Airport” too. WeatherUnderground now automatically pops up airports and you have to fight to get the non-airport stations.
“Raleigh Executive Airport” in Sanford (Located in the middle of a bunch of farms) is 68 °F and RDU is still 68 °F @ 8:09 (it is misting rain through the entire area)
The close by rural stations are:
Log Barn Rd, Pittsboro, North Carolina: 66.9 °F
Old Chestnut Crossing, Moncure, North Carolina (PWS) : 66.7 °F
Jordan Lake, Pittsboro, North Carolina (PWS): 66.4 °F
Henrys Ridge, Pittsboro, North Carolina (PWS) 67.3 °F

michaeljmcfadden says:
August 20, 2012 at 3:28 am
Am I reading the map incorrectly? It would appear that there were “high minimum temps” in Bismarck, Denver, Raleigh, NY, Portland, Chicago … why would there be HMTs in just those major cities? What about all the non-big-city areas around them? The generalized “low temps” seem to all be sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

I can’t speak for the other cities, but here in North Carolina it was a cloudy, rainy day all day. Clouds hold temperature down during the day but up at night too. When you average the temperature, it was well-below the 30 year “normal”. The Raleigh measurements are at the local airport too. I live 50 miles east of Raleigh. When I drive into Raleigh, my car’s temperature reading always increases by 3 degrees or so going into the city and drops by the same amount leaving. The urban heat island effect can be easily felt driving in and out of Raleigh.

Who fiddled with the “climate dice” again?

Global Warming … is there anything it can’t do?

Gail Combs says:
August 20, 2012 at 5:36 am
Entropic man says:
August 20, 2012 at 3:57 am
I would hate to live in the Midwest at the moment. Between drought, heat waves, record low temperatures your weather is bouncing around all over the place.
________________________________
When the humidity is low the temperatures bounce a lot.
—————————————————–
In Ireland we get the opposite effect. Constant humidity moderates the temperatures. With 50″ of rain and a semi-permanent position just North of the Polar Front, we have very mild temperatures. In Winter we get a couple of cold spells a year with an inch or so of snow, but it never lasts more than 2-3 days. In Summer 80F is a rare hot day to be remarked upon (we mostly speculate when it will stop raining!). We are at the latitude of Seattle, with the Gulf Stream flowing past to warm things up a bit.
The only sign of climate change here is a long term trend becoming a bit warmer, and even wetter.

While I don’t doubt that the vast majority of these will stand, I can guarantee with 100% certainty that the Pulaski, TN record is wrong. It did not even get into the 50s anywhere near there this past weekend, so there is some kind of mistake. Again, that doesn’t change the overall result.

Gail Combs-
You wrote:
“According to Smith, there’s also been an affinity for retaining airport stations over other kinds of stations. His count shows 92% of GHCN stations in the USA are sited at airports, with about 41% worldwide.”
I am very interested in temperature measurements and would very much like to quote this information because it is so important. Where can I find information on “Smith” and these results?
Information on the relationship between GHCN and USHCN (checked by the WUWT survey) would be helpful; without checking I presume that USHCN is just the US part of GHCN. (I have read this information before but thoughts slip eventually…..)
I’ll return to this WUWT posting and hope to find an answer. Alternatively, please e-mail me directly at imcqueen(at)nbnet.nb.ca
IanM

The High Min Temps on the west coast seem to be along the I5 corridor.

Just goes to show how the exceptional warmth in the Arctic which is melting out the polar ice has disrupted the jetstreams so that the cold air is pulled down ove the midwest.
Expect much more of these extremes in both directions as the polar amplification of AGW causes weather patterns not seem for at least a thousand years !

I’m thinking the 26 in MI might be a misprint for 36, which would still be a new record. Likewise possibly for Pulaski TN and the one in TX; they dropped so far below the previous record that a misprint is highly possible, without in the least changing the fact of so many new or tied low records. Here in central VA we are at 71 having just finished with a light drizzle; very cool for nearly noon in August. Yesterday the airport zoomed all the way to 75, but we didn’t exceed 72 here. Still humid, though; hard to work outside for long; my glasses steam up and so do I.

It has been a slightly wetter year here in Florida. Clearly the only explanation is that global waring is causing droughts and rain at the same time.
[Should that not be “Global warring”? 8<) Robt]

I Carnac the all seeing seer, see the August 2012 headline from the great whore J. Hansen. August 2012 was the the hottest month ever. The desert Southwest and West Coast were the drivers of the heat. Never mind the cooler temperatures east of the Rockies, as they were just weather.
Even now J. Hansen is feverishly rewriting the past record al la Mikey’s nature trick.

While we haven’t broken any record lows here in northern WI (to my knowledge), we’ve had some days that didn’t even reach 70F. Yes, it’s northern WI, but August is usually hot and humid, 80’s with some 90’s. Depressing because I cherish those hot, muggy days after 5 months of attempted glaciation…

@- Smokey says:
“izen’s belief system convinces him that he actually knows the weather patterns from a thousand years ago…”
Not quite.
my ‘belief’ system convinces me that the physics that explains the climate of the past is the same as the physics that operates to generate the climate of the present.
I do not know what the weather patterns were like a thousand years ago.
But I expect them to be similar if the physical conditions, such as Arctic temperatures and ice cover are similar.
@- “This has all happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater extent. ”
Yes, I agree. The past climate shows a high degree of variability. Quite small changes in the energy balance seem to cause quite large changes in the climate. Solar input, volcanoes and CO2 levels can alter the climate quite dramatically, as if it was quite sensitive….
@- “We are now in a “Goldilocks climate”, where temperatures have been unusually flat for the past century and a half.”
I agree with you again, with the proviso that it was true for the century and a half before ~1950. The LIA was noteworthy for the stability of its climate. the variation was small compared to warmer times. The MWP perhaps (of uncertain extent and synchronisation) but more obviously the post-melt Holocene optimum ~8000 years ago were similar on global temperatures to now and show the much greater variation that is expected.
As Hansen recently demonstrated from observations, as the average temperature rises the width of the variance increases. Kurtosis is the inevitable process that brings more extremes as surface temperatures rise.
@- “The alarmist crowd never did have any scientific evidence on their side, only their misguided belief system. Religious belief in CAGW seems to be enough for most of them. Crazy, no?”
Not sure about CAGW which seems to be a rejectionist meme, but AGW is a crazy religion in that it is the only one that has changed its doctrine in the light of empirical evidence. In the 50s when Revelle discovered that the oceans would not absorb all anthropogenic CO2 emissions and they would accumulate in the atmosphere, in the 60s when Plass et al calculated the radiative transfer of energy in the atmosphere and showed that there was a significant energy imbalance caused by rising CO2.
The converts really flocked in when simple models made in the 80s were validated by further direct measurement of upwelling and downwelling LWR. Such was the power of theory validated by observation that ‘believers’ now include every scientific institution of any credible reputation ascribing to the ‘belief’, more commonly called an understanding of the physics.
I can’t think of another ‘religion’ that has gathered so many followers with scientific theory supported by empirical measurement – can you?
{Grin}

I have found this website pretty useful for quckly finding a tally of U.S. temperature records, and it allows you to filter that search by state or time frame:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/
I am no fan of how the media reports on climate issues, but the data from that site do seem to show that record highs for the year to date have far outnumbered record lows.

Bob Berwyn says:
August 20, 2012 at 12:27 pm
if someone shows that global warming is NOT happening, it will get all sorts of media attention.
Exactly what time period are we talking about? RSS is now at 15 years and 8 months with no warming. See: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend

It would be REALLY interesting to find out the CRN designations of these 127 stations. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the majority were CRN 3 or CRN 4?

The BEST project has shown that one-third of weather stations in the U.S. have shown net cooling over their record(at least 70 years).So it is surely not surprising that we had many record lows last weekend. But the really important issue is why we have both warming and cooling stations (see figure 4 and accompanying comments in their paper “Influence of Urban Heating…”)
I have not seen any discussion of this paradox. Is it claimed that there is a complex pattern of micro- (and mini-) climates? If so, it would be helpful to see some carefully analyzed examples. Or does this behavior suggest that there are significant bias errors in the temperature measurement systems? As someone who has been actively engaged in all aspects of temperature measurement for many years, my present disposition is to favor the second explanation. Any comments?

Werner Brozek, you wrote:

However when you consider that there has been natural warming since the LIA, the new low records are doubly bad for warmists. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg

1. Do you care to share the scientific reference from which the picture under the link was taken?
2. I also don’t understand the logic in your statement. What is the link between “natural warming since the LIA” and the “new record lows” supposed to be?
2. Why would the occurrence of some record lows be “doubly bad for warmists”? Is the occurrence of record lows in the daily data at some stations supposed to be in contradiction to anything that has been published in the scientific literature by “warmists”? Or to what?

Werner Brozek, you wrote:

Exactly what time period are we talking about? RSS is now at 15 years and 8 months with no warming. See: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend

And why exactly did you specifically choose the RSS data set, but none of the other data sets? Because it fits your narrative best about “no warming” for “15 years and 8 months”? All the trend calculations for the global temperature anomaly, which start at or not many years before 1998 are strongly affected by the very strong El Nino in 1998. Your statements that there hadn’t been any (with probability x% statistically significant) temperature increase at the surface or in the troposphere for a time period, where the global temperature series is still dominated by modes of natural variability like ENSO may be technically correct, insofar a (with probability x% statistically significant) trend can’t be detected in the data series, but such a result does not allow any scientifically valid conclusion about whether global warming is an ongoing physical process or not. The non-detectability of a trend in a time series does not logically allow the conclusion that a longer-term trend is absent, because it can’t be logically excluded that the chosen time period was just too short and the trend was only masked by noise for the chosen period.
REPLY: I think it has to do with the fact that few people trust GISS anymore. After all, why would anyone trust data published by a scientist who has a criminal arrest record for advocacy of said data/results such as Dr. James Hansen does? I sure don’t. – Anthony

As I mouse over the record night warmth I see airports, a fire station, a fish hatchery, Burbank Vally Pump Plant(looks to be a sewage treatment plant).
More siting issues!!
mouse over the yellow dots
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/2day/us.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,lowmax,highmin

Jan P Perlwitz
Speaking of fitting a narrative, why is GISTemp like this?
Does GISTemp change? part 1

Does GISTemp change? part 2

climatetruthinitiative says:
August 20, 2012 at 7:30 am
…I am very interested in temperature measurements and would very much like to quote this information because it is so important. Where can I find information on “Smith” and these results?…
______________________________
At WUWT it was : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/on-the-march-of-the-thermometers/
E.M. Smith is ChiefIO and he wrote a series of articles on the dropping of the thermometers. A lot of links are in this article Assume A Spherical Cow – therefore all steaks are round and in this article http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/temperatures-now-compared-to-maintained-ghcn/
He starts with this 2009 article: NCDC GHCN – Airports by Year by Latitude http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/ncdc-ghcn-airports-by-year-by-latitude/
The compendium report is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/26/new-paper-on-surface-temperature-records/

@ Gail Combs
Thanks for the references. I am well aware of ChiefIO (E.M. Smith, but wasn’t sure that you were referring to him.
Now to read all your references.
IanM

@- RiHo08 says:
“With global warming there is to be more water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor, being a greenhouse gas, in a warming world ,will accumulate in the atmosphere by increased evaporation retarding the flow of photons from surface to space, increasing the heat energy of the atmosphere, warming the surface atmosphere.”
Yes, that is right, and confirmed by direct observation.
@-“Now the hard part. With an increased moist atmosphere; i.e., greater specific humidity, the low temperatures will be less cold, and the high temperatures will be less high. Do I have that right?”
Not quite.
That is true for global medium to long term averages, not for local short term weather.
@-“You have said that the physics of CO2 will inextricably push global atmospheric moisture content higher, which… to my understanding will lead to less extremes, not more….Have I got that right? What have I missed? I have heard that the global atmospheric specific humidity has decreased over the past 60 years. Your physics & position are vexing to me.”
Your vexation is the result of assuming that the increased humidity will have a dominant effect at all spatial and temporal scales of reducing the extremes. But the greater variance with higher temperatures can override that.
If you have heard that global atmospheric specific humidity has decreased over the last 60 years you must have been listening to Monckton.
As usual he is wrong. direct measurement from satellites confirm the rising moisture content.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5749/841.abstract
Longer term records are problematic because consistent measuring methods were not used in past, pre-satellite, data, but even with that caveat they show increasing humidity.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JD014192.shtml
Local extremes of weather will still occur, in fact become more probable, with rising temperatures caused by rising humidity. This is because the rise in temperature can disrupt previously stable weather patterns.
The obvious explanation for the spate of extreme lows referenced in this thread is the position of the jet stream pulling Arctic air down over the US central/eastern landmass.
And the probable cause of that is this –
https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 20, 2012 at 4:58 pm
And why exactly did you specifically choose the RSS data set, but none of the other data sets?….The non-detectability of a trend in a time series does not logically allow the conclusion that a longer-term trend is absent, because it can’t be logically excluded that the chosen time period was just too short and the trend was only masked by noise for the chosen period.
While RSS has the longest time of zero slope, Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2 are right behind and are also over 15 years of no warming. Even GISS has no warming for 11 years and 5 months. And yes, there is noise. But note that RSS is 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years and Hadsst2 is 91.7% of the way there. As for Hadcrut3, I really wish it would get updated past March. I do know the later values, but they are not on WFT however I believe Hadcrut3 would show 15 years and 5 months of no warming if updated. This puts it at 90.7% of the way to Santer’s 17 years. As well, it was predicted that Hadcrut3 would break the 1998 record in half the years from 2010 to 2015. It has not happened yet and there is no way Hadcrut3 nor any other set will break any record this year. Further details on 5 sets follow.
2012 in Perspective so far on Five Data Sets
2012 started off rather cold but has warmed up since then. So the present rank is not the most meaningful number. Therefore I will also give what the ranking would be assuming the latest month’s anomaly will continue for the rest of the year. I will also indicate what is required for the rest of the year in each case to set a new record.
Note the bolded numbers for each data set where the lower bolded number is the highest anomaly recorded so far in 2012 and the higher one is the all time record so far. There is no comparison.
With the UAH anomaly for July at 0.28, the average for the first seven months of the year is (-0.089 -0.111 + 0.111 + 0.299 + 0.289 + 0.369 + 0.28)/7 = 0.164. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 9th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.153 to rank it 9th for that year. On the other hand, if the rest of the year averaged the July value, which is more likely if the El Nino gets stronger, then 2012 would come in at 0.212 and it would rank 5th. 1998 was the warmest at 0.428. The highest ever monthly anomalies were in February and April of 1998 when it reached 0.66. In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 5 months of the year would need to be 0.80. Since this is above the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record.
With the GISS anomaly for July at 0.47, the average for the first seven months of the year is (0.34 + 0.40 + 0.47 + 0.55 + 0.66 + 0.56 + 0.47)/7 = 0.493. This is about the same as in 2011 when it was 0.514 and ranked 9th for that year. 2010 was the warmest at 0.63. The highest ever monthly anomalies were in March of 2002 and January of 2007 when it reached 0.88. If the July anomaly continued for the rest of the year, 2012 would end up 10th. In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 5 months of the year would need to be 0.82. Since this is close to the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for June at 0.477, the average for the first six months of the year is (0.217 + 0.194 + 0.305 + 0.481 + 0.475 + 0.477)/6 = 0.358. This would rank 11th if it stayed this way. This is slightly above the anomaly in 2011 which was at 0.34 to rank it 12th for that year. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. If the June anomaly continued for the rest of the year, 2012 would end up 9th. In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 6 months of the year would need to be 0.738. Since this is close to the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less.
With the sea surface anomaly for July at 0.386, the average for the first seven months of the year is (0.203 + 0.230 + 0.241 + 0.292 + 0.339 + 0.351 + 0.386)/7 = 0.292. This would rank it 11th compared to 2011 when it was 0.273 and ranked 12th for that year. 1998 was the warmest at 0.451. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 1998 when it reached 0.555. If the July anomaly continued for the rest of the year, 2012 would end up 10th. In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 5 months of the year would need to be 0.67. Since this is above the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record.
With the RSS anomaly for July at 0.292, the average for the first seven months of the year is (-0.058 -0.121 + 0.073 + 0.332 + 0.232 + 0.339 + 0.292)/7 = 0.156. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 12th. This compares with the anomaly in 2011 at 0.147 to rank it 12th for that year. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. If the July anomaly continued for the rest of the year, 2012 would end up 10th. In order for a new record to be set in 2012, the average for the last 5 months of the year would need to be 1.10. Since this is above the highest monthly anomaly ever recorded, it is virtually impossible for 2012 to set a new record.
So on all five of the above data sets, for their latest anomaly average, the 2012 average so far is close to that of 2011. If present trends continue, 2012 will be warmer than 2011, but a record is out of reach on all sets. My projection for the five sets above is that 2012 will come in either 9th or 10th on 4 of the sets, but 5th on UAH.
On all data sets, the different times for a slope that is flat for all practical purposes range from 10 years and 10 months to 15 years and 8 months. Following is the longest period of time (above 10 years) where each of the data sets is more or less flat. (*No slope is positive except UAH which is +0.0022 per year or +0.22/century up to July. So while it is not flat, the slope is not statistically significant either.)
1. UAH: since October 2001 or 10 years, 10 months (goes to July, but note * above)
2. GISS: since March 2001 or 11 years, 5 months (goes to July)
3. Combination of the above 4: since October 2000 or 11 years, 6 months (goes to March) (Hadcrut3 is SLOW!!)
4. HadCrut3: since January 1997 or 15 years, 3 months (goes to March)
5. Sea surface temperatures: since January 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to July)
6. RSS: since December 1996 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to July)
RSS is 188/204 or 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
7. Hadcrut4: since December 2000 or 11 years, 8 months (goes to July using GISS. See below.)
See the graph below to show it all for #1 to #6.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.16/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend/plot/wti/from:2000.75/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:2001.75/trend
For #7: Hadcrut4 only goes to December 2010 so what I did was get the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the end of December 2010. Then I got the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the present. The DIFFERENCE in slope was that the slope was 0.0049 lower for the total period. The positive slope for Hadcrut4 was 0.0041 from December 2000. So IF Hadcrut4 were totally up to date, and IF it then were to trend like GISS, I conclude it would show no slope for at least 11 years and 8 months going back to December 2000. (By the way, doing the same thing with Hadcrut3 gives the same end result, but GISS comes out much sooner each month.) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/trend
P.S. Thank you for your comment Anthony!

Amino Acids in Meteorites asked:

Speaking of fitting a narrative, why is GISTemp like this?

referring to the divergence in recent years of the 12-year linear trend between GISS analysis on one hand and, on the other hand, the HadCRUT3, UAH, and RSS data sets.
This divergence in the trends over recent 12-year periods is very likely due to two factors. One is the treatment of locations which are remote from locations for which there are measured data. This particularly concerns the polar regions, e.g. the Arctic ocean. The temperature anomalies are interpolated and extrapolated from surrounding stations in the GISS analysis. HadCRUT assumes that the anomaly at those locations equals the Hemispheric mean anomaly. The data sets based on satellite retrievals don’t cover the polar regions. So, if there is a warming in the polar regions larger than the global average, like in the Arctic in recent years, the other three data sets have a smaller trend in the global temperature anomaly than the GISS data set.
The second factor is the amplitude of the very strong El Nino of the year 1998 in the various data sets. The amplitude of this El Nino event is smaller in the GISS data sets than in the other three data sets. I suspect the difference to HadCRUT3 is again due to the larger weight of the Arctic data in GISS analysis. And the tropospheric temperatures data derived from the satellite measurements appear to be more sensitive to ENSO than the surface temperature data. Thus, the stronger El Nino signal in the other data sets strongly affects the results from the trend analysis for the recent 12-year periods. One has to keep in mind that these trends are not statistically significant. So there isn’t really any statistical difference between the trends despite the divergence.
The differences in the analyses on which GISSTEMP and HadCRUT are based are discussed by the scientists who do the analysis, here: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00510u.html
Nothing sinister going on there. Anyone who wants to assert or suggest the scientists at GISS who do this analysis manipulate or forge the data and the results from the analysis for whatever non-scientific agenda of which they are being accused, and that there wouldn’t be such a trend in the global temperature anomaly w/o the allged forgery should feel free to show this at the code and the data, which are used for the analysis. It’s all public:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/GISTEMP_sources.tar.gz
HadCRUT4 is closer to the GISS analysis. HadCRUT4 includes more measurements from the Arctic than HadCRUT3.
REPLY: For the most part, there are few Arctic temperature measurements above the Arctic circle. GISS goes way overboard interpolating Arctic surface data where none exists. One only has too look at the station distribution in those latitudes, and then compare it with the interpolated output made by GISS to see this. – Anthony

It is mathematically trivial to find a decade, or even 13 years of temperature data from various sources that show no statistically significant cooling for the period.
Or significant warming or statistically significantly stability.
Claiming that temperatures have been ‘unchanged’ for eleven years in the GISS data or some other source is just as right, or wrong, as claiming that they show a continuing warming trend. The variance mainly caused by ENSO fluctuations that are around double the decadal trend render any short record incapable of distinguishing between stasis, cooling or warming.
The key indicator is what trend, or stasis appears when the record is extended to a length that DOES generate statistically significant results. It is notable that for all these records with no significant trend over a short period, as soon as that period is extended back a year or two the warming trend does become statistically significant and unequivocal.
The frequent claim that warming is not detectable in the last few years of data is rather like claiming that the advent of summer is not detectable in a week of temperature data.
But in the part of the climate that encompasses over 70% of the energy involved in warming, the oceans, and is not so affected by the ENSO fluctuations, a clear significant trend of warming CAN be seen in the last decade of data.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Bob Berwyn says:
August 20, 2012 at 12:27 pm
…..As for media coverage, I can assure you that, if we see a real and documented long-term trend toward lower temperatures, record lows, or if someone shows that global warming is NOT happening, it will get all sorts of media attention. Til then, stay cool!
___________________________________________
The media is a whore for the politicians, bankers (JP Morgan: Our next big media player?,) for General Electric (NBCUniversal) and the other large corporations (Advertising dollars)
The media knows which side they are on it it is not the side of the little guy. It is on the side of the guy who owns the press, owns the mortgages and pays for advertising.
This is a bit of background for the politically naive:

…Enron has given vast sums of cash to both Republicans and Democrats. While Democrats are presently attempting to link Enron and its chairman, Kenneth Lay, to President George Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, they conveniently seem to have forgotten that Enron in 1997 contributed $100,000 to the Democratic Party immediately after President Bill Clinton directly intervened to help Enron gain a $3-billion project in India… http://mises.org/daily/872

Gore’s Inconvenient Enron
Al Gore obfuscates, downplays and refuses to discuss the role that CEOs have played in crafting his Cap-and-Trade C02 trading schemes and carbon swapping systems.
Al Gore tries to put a lid in Congressional committee testimony on a little reported but vitally important subject in the global warming, carbon-tax ‘debate’- the new derivatives bubble in the emerging green-energy credit-swap market….
…. I left my law firm to accept a position that had rather unexpectedly fallen in my lap with a phone call from Enron, asking me to be their Director of Federal Government Relations. Everyone polled suggested it was a great opportunity, a company admired throughout town, not just by the current (Clinton-Gore) administration with which it was very close, but by Republicans, too….
…the next day I was tasked with sitting in for “Kenny Boy” [Ken Lay] at a meeting in fancy New York law firm offices (in DC), around a table of Baptists and Bootleggers, rent-seekers and green puritans, discussing how to ensure a global warming treaty came about, of our collective design, and how to rope the U.S. in.
So, seeing very measured groups like Union of Concerned Scientists on my immediate left, I turned to one of the rent-seekers’ officers on my right, among whom I recall being the American Gas Association, Niagara-Mohawk Power, and BP, among others. In response to my query, “what are we doing sitting around a table with a bunch of people who want to put us out of business?”, I was told with a laugh, “they want to put coal out of business first.”
…So I fired off a “Houston, we have a problem” missive to my boss asking if Enron knew what it was getting into in this group. That’s when they explained the specifics of their business plan to me – which did include setting up a trading business with Goldman [Sachs], by the way, as one of Goldman’s energy practice chiefs at the time also roared to me in joy about about all of the money they were going to make. This cannot conceivably be news to Gore and his VC partner and former Goldman [Sachs] Pooh-Bah Blood [David Blood] discussed in the linked item.
… fast forward… I’m gone, and Enron and the greens are continuing on their way with what happens to be Congress’s current agenda….
The intervening event? An August 4, 1997 Oval Office meeting with Kenny Boy, (then-) Sir John Browne of BP, and the President and Vice President of the United States….
As revealed by the August 1, 1997 Kenny Boy briefing memo subsequently aired after the unpleasantness, in this meeting Kenny Boy was to demand that the Senate be ignored, that the administration agree to Kyoto, and most important that it contain a cap-and-trade scheme.
I leave you with key excerpts from the “what I did in Kyoto” memo by Lay’s Kyoto aide (yep, he had one), John Palmissano, hailing Enron’s success:

* “This treaty [Kyoto] is exactly what I have been lobbying for”
* “This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”
* “Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, [World Wildlife Fund], [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI, and Worldwatch.”
* “This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monitized).” (sic)
“if implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.”

http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/04/28/gores-inconvenient-enron/

So who is David Blood? He [Al Gore] is a founder of Generation Investment Management, based in London and run by David Blood, a former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management
So what was in it for Al Gore? Gore Pocketed ~$18 Million from Now-Defunct Chicago Climate Exchange via Generation Investment Management. Didn’t someone say a sucker is born every minute? seems like Gore found a whole bunch of them.
Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.
Also see “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Force, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed“.
Quotes and links from the history of the scam: ‘Green’ groups worked with Enron to make billions in CO2 trading schemes with made up global warming
I do find it incredible how warmists continue to ignore all the evidence that this was a money making scheme from the get go and the Energy Corporations, bankers, politicians and the Media were all in on it. You do not have to be able to follow the science, all you have to do is Follow the Money.
More on Follow the MONEY follow the links. Full Report in pdf

@- Gail Combs
“BULL, I saw similar weather in the 1950’s – 1970’s You’re probably just too young.”
No, I remember the cold winters of the fifties.
And you certainly did not see similar weather in the 50s-70s to the recent record heat waves that were hotter than ANY recorded.
Or the Arctic ice loss and polar warming that is also greater than any seen in the historical record.

I love the smell of desperation in the morning. You really have to have blinders on to think a statement like “Or the Arctic ice loss and polar warming that is also greater than any seen in the historical record” has any truth to it whatsoever. Why the qualifier “in the historical record”? In order to set the parameters of the discussion. Outside these parameters, they are sunk. The qualifier tells me who the real (d-word)s are. The statement does not stand without the qualifier.

izen
Your vexation is the result of assuming that the increased humidity will have a dominant effect at all spatial and temporal scales of reducing the extremes. But the greater variance with higher temperatures can override that.
Do you have a source? A) There is greater variance with higher temperatures? B) If A, then is there evidence that temperatures do override the dampening effect of high humidity?
Query: what dampens temperatures if it isn’t water vapor? Like in: Desert? Polar? Tropics?
On the Dessler 2010 reanalysis reference. I went back to Steve McIntyre’s blog and re-read the discussion on monthly centering and the subsequent dialogue with Nick Stokes. What I took away from that exchange, the statistical use of monthly centering could and did give spurious increase in tropospheric moisture and that the Paltridge’s weather balloon data showing a decrease in tropospheric moisture had not been refuted by Dessler’s reanalysis.
A last point, your: rising temperatures disrupt previously stable weather patterns (short term time scale). I thought the weather was unpredictable more than 10 or so days out because weather is chaotic. Is chaos stable? It seems that earth’s stable temperature range is due to its oceans and moist atmosphere. Again, moisture trumping all sorts of calamities over 3 to 4 billions of years (long term time scale).

Entropic man says:
August 21, 2012 at 9:59 am
That would not exclude a rise of 0.6C or a decrease of 0.6C over the 15 year period. Your claim is not justified by the data.That is why noone is getting too excited.
The data also would not exclude no change over the 15 year period either. I really wish it were true that no one is getting exited. But that is not the case. Under the circumstances, I would think it would be prudent to NOT spend a billion dollars on carbon capture as they plan on doing here in Alberta. For political reasons, some people are very excited over a warming that does not seem to exist. Would it be too much to ask that people NOT spend a lot of money on a perceived problem which may not materialize?
As for the error bars, you would have to take that up with WFT. It only does that for BEST.

Werner Brozek you wrote:

While RSS has the longest time of zero slope, Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2 are right behind and are also over 15 years of no warming. Even GISS has no warming for 11 years and 5 months. And yes, there is noise.

Well, I suppose you don’t know what to reply to my argument regarding the relevance of such technical information. Otherwise you wouldn’t just ignore it.

This puts it at 90.7% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.

What are “Santer’s 17 years”? What is supposed to happen at 17 years?

Anthony Watts wrote:

REPLY:“as a citizen”? I call BS on that. He wouldn’t be invited to these protests if he was “just a citizen”

For what reason someone invites Hansen is irrelevant with respect to his civil rights. He is a citizen and it is his private business to engage in political activism, whether you like it or not. It’s news to me that scientists, even if they are employed by the government, are not allowed to have political views and to express them in their free time.

He’s your boss

I’m not a federal employee. Jim Hansen is not my boss.

James Hansen has blown his trust with the public, he should be fired for violating the Hatch Act IMHO. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony

Oh, I’m not upset. I’m glad that you reveal here what you think. I just see this alleged violation of this Hatch Act as wishful thinking on your side. Jim Hansen, being a federal employee, is not forbidden to engage in political activism in his free time. Being the director of NASA GISS doesn’t change this. I think you have some problems with the concepts of democracy and civil rights.

REPLY: Oh, please. Prove then that Dr. Hansen did these things in his “free time” from GISS, lets see the evidence. Prove that he was totally detached from NASA. Show us the requests for leaves of absence, and the approval of them, or your concept is one of opinion and not of fact. And while you are at it, let’s see where you are then in the tree structure so we know exactly who we are dealing with then.
If you aren’t a Federal employee, why then are your listed on a federal website:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/janperlwitz.html
???
I think you are full it it, because your actions say otherwise. When you first started commenting on this blog, you were using your at work network infrastructure. Now that has disappeared, replaced with a local ISP, and you have stopped commenting during GISS working hours. I think you’ve realized that doing such things could in fact get you in trouble, just like the things Hansen is doing will probably get him in trouble someday when NASA has an administrator who isn’t afraid to hold people accountable.
What’s next or your plan, an arrest record like Jim Hansen? Seems that based on your emotional issues you’ve been displaying you are headed down the path of activism just like him.
– Anthony

Jan P Perlwitz
Anyone who understands math and graphs can see your explanation is wanting—it does not legitimize the divergence. GISTemp has diverged from all three of the other data sets in recent years. Before that divergence the four data sets had a relation ship unlike the relationship they had after the divergence of the one set happened. That shows something is going on with GISS data that is not in the others. If two data sets had gone off in divergence that GISTemp has there could be some acceptable explanation. Your explanation, for example, may carry some weight then. But GISTemp is the only one showing warming that the others do not.
James Hansen is an environmental activist. This clearly leaves one with legitimate suspicions about the warming in his data set that has passed through his hands. The data set of a global warming activist, who is called the “grandfather of global warming”, shows more warming in recent years that other well known data sets do. The explanations that try to legitimize why this lone data set shows this warming may ring hollow to many people.

Several cold stations have been dropped from the temperature record:
Joseph D’Aleo, drop cold temperature stations, keep warm ones, voilà, global warming
3 minute video

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 20, 2012 at 4:20 pm
1. Do you care to share the scientific reference from which the picture under the link was taken?
Why would the occurrence of some record lows be “doubly bad for warmists”?
Jan, something did not seem right about me missing something so I double checked and apparently missed this one. I apologize for that.
In answer to the questions you raised as to where I got that diagram from. Dr. David Evans wrote a 26 page pdf on the missing hot spot and this diagram was on page 21. Go to: MissingSignature.pdf Then click on
[PDF]
The Missing Hotspot
Adobe PDF
1 The Missing Hotspot Dr David Evans (david.evans@sciencespeak.com) 21 July 2008 Last major revision 22 Mar 2009, Last minor revision 18 Sept 2010
As for the two record lows comments, we are at the high point of the sine wave so a record low would be rare for that reason. But apart from the high point on the sine wave, it is generally accepted that we have warmed up about 0.7 degrees C since about 1750. The combination of both factors should make record lows very rare indeed. The fact that there were so many recently suggests that the CO2 is not causing catastrophic warming. I realize this is just weather, but it still does not look good for warmists.

Anthony Watts wrote in reply to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/us-record-lows-outpace-record-highs-127-to-4-this-weekend/#comment-1062555

REPLY: The lack of weather stations in the Arctic where GISS interpolates up data where there isn’t any isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact. – Anthony

Yes, and nowhere did I say it wasn’t. But the statements in sentence 2 and 3 in your reply were mere statements of opinion.
Anthony Watts wrote in reply to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/us-record-lows-outpace-record-highs-127-to-4-this-weekend/#comment-1062562

REPLY: Oh, please. Prove then that Dr. Hansen did these things in his “free time” from GISS, lets see the evidence. Prove that he was totally detached from NASA. Show us the requests for leaves of absence, and the approval of them, or your concept is one of opinion and not of fact.

I’m not the one with the burden of proof with respect to your accusations against Jim Hansen. You make accusations against a person, you have the burden of proof.

And while you are at it, let’s see where you are then in the tree structure so we know exactly who we are dealing with then.

A look in the GISS directory could already have answered all your questions with respect to my primary affiliation. But what I observe here, not just with respect to this factoid, there seems to be a pattern that you prefer to make assertions before doing proper research.

If you aren’t a Federal employee, why then are your listed on a federal website:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/janperlwitz.html
???

Because I work at GISS. There aren’t only federal employees working at GISS.

I think you are full it it, because your actions say otherwise. When you first started commenting on this blog, you were using your at work network infrastructure.

That’s your assertion.

Now that has disappeared, replaced with a local ISP, and you have stopped commenting during GISS working hours.

What are supposed to be “GISS working hours”? I don’t have regular working hours. I’m not paid for a 9 to 5 job. I also often work from home, since I have a nice, large home office with a great view.

What’s next or your plan, an arrest record like Jim Hansen? Seems that based on your emotional issues you’ve been displaying you are headed down the path of activism just like him.

You worry too much about me. You should rather worry about your own issues, of which you seem to be projecting a lot on others. Going down the path of Jim Hansen would not be such a bad one. He is an internationally well respected scientists and what he says matters. There are much worse paths to go down. For instance becoming part of an angry fringe group, who has lost the scientific argument and therefore doesn’t have much more left than raging in opinion blogs like this one here, and to delve into absurd fantasies about a worldwide, omnipotent conspiracy that was suppressing “The Truth”.
REPLY: Yeah I’m sure GISS will respond timely to the FOIA requests just like they have in the past /sarc. They will cite “employee privacy” and tell me to pound sand, thus your “burden of proof” claim is unobtainium.
” Going down the path of Jim Hansen would not be such a bad one.”
I look forward to seeing you arrested with Jim soon. You work at GISS, but aren’t a federal employee? Check. That makes you expendable when the reorganization comes.
BTW when will you be pushing your partners at RC to allow for skeptics such as myself to post there without their comments being immediately deleted? Since you are so concerned over the issue here (from your smear blog posting) I’d like to see that email where you take your concerns for “free speech” to the very people in your office who suppress it. Or, will I have to FOIA that one too?
Your attitude towards people here suggests you embrace the “instant deletion” of RC comments by skeptics such as myself. I look forward to your position on the matter.
– Anthony

E.M.Smith wrote at August 21, 2012 at 9:18 pm:

So you get a “bait and switch” process. “Anyone” can go look – as long as they say it’s all just fine. Say it isn’t, well, you are not anointed enough then… So what’s the point in saying “Go look” if the intent is to dismiss the results of the looking?

I haven’t dismissed anything. If you think you have found something substantial then publishing it in a peer reviewed climate journal would be the next logical step. If you don’t have enough experience get someone on board who does. What about McIntyre? Why don’t you try to get him onboard? He should be very eager to publish something that proves all those ugly analyses from GISS about global warming as bogus. There are enough specialist journals in the field where this could get published. And if nothing helps, there is still Energy & Environment.

There clearly was NO intent that folks could go “look for themselves”, only that “Peers and Pals” could really matter…

And here comes the conspiracy fantasy again. Another meme and talking point in the fake skeptic universe. All the climate journals are under the control of a sinister global, omnipotent conspiracy, so that “The Truth” can’t get published. Excuses, excuses.

It is such pointless GAME PLAYING that is one of the hallmarks of deception, IMHO, and that kind of thing was one of the first things to convince me that one side was playing games (the warmers) while the other side was looking for real ground level truth.

The GAME is that I request you and your friends have to uphold the same scientific standards as working scientists are mandated to fulfill to get published with the results of their research, especially if you want to question the validity of those results. To uphold a high level of scientific standards is the function of the peer review process. It doesn’t always work out, reviewers are not infallible, editors make mistakes too, but the standards are in place. And once you do I will accept you as true skeptics. You seem to think that is such an unfair game toward you, currently. But it’s the other way around. You don’t want fairness, because you want a privileged treatment compared to working scientists. You want the elaborations in your opinion blog be seen on equal footing, but you don’t want to uphold the same scientific standards. Or you want to lower the standards altogether. The ones who don’t like a rigorous peer review process are the ones who want to lower the standards.

But there is no ‘gatekeeper’ on my postings.

And nothing that prevents you from asserting whatever you want and its opposite in your opinion blog. And it ensures that nothing what you produce there is put under the same scientific scrutiny by the scientific community as the scrutiny which is put on the results from research published by working scientists. You don’t have any mandated standards of a scientific discussion, standards like everything has to be backed up with references and proof of sources. You don’t have to follow rules like stating clearly the assumptions, that the conclusions are logical and sufficiently backed up with the evidence provided, that the methodology is sufficiently described to be able to scientifically reproduce the results, and to refrain from attacking other scientists, instead of providing scientific counter-arguments, if you don’t agree with the results from the research provided by the other scientists.
I’m not going to take someones elaborations as equally seriously as a real scientific publication, whatever this someone asserts how important it is scientifically what he has done, if this someone refutes to submit to the same standards to which working scientists are required to submit.
You and Mr. Courtney are allowed to complain about this to the Internet.

REPLY: “You and Mr. Courtney are allowed to complain about this to the Internet.”
Allowed?
Wow, just wow, that has to be the most arrogant condescending comment I’ve ever seen. This while whining in blog posts at your new blog that a couple of your comments got deleted here out of the now over 150 you’ve made.
Mr. Perlwitz, I think I shall make an example of your comment. Until that time, I suggest for your own good that you limit your postings here, you aren’t making any friends, and you aren’t convincing anyone with your attitude.
– Anthony

Anthony Watts wrote in reply to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/us-record-lows-outpace-record-highs-127-to-4-this-weekend/#comment-1062777

REPLY: Yeah I’m sure GISS will respond timely to the FOIA requests just like they have in the past /sarc. They will cite “employee privacy” and tell me to pound sand, thus your “burden of proof” claim is unobtainium.

Not my problem.

You work at GISS, but aren’t a federal employee? Check. That makes you expendable when the reorganization comes.

If you say so. I’m certain you look forward to it.

BTW when will you be pushing your partners at RC to allow for skeptics such as myself to post there without their comments being immediately deleted?

I don’t have anything to do with maintaining the RealClimate blog. Btw: I have seen that true skeptics can place their comments at RC.

I’d like to see that email where you take your concerns for “free speech” to the very people in your office who suppress it. Or, will I have to FOIA that one too?

What does my office have to do with the RealClimate blog? RC is a private undertaking hosted by scientists from various countries:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/contributors/
No one is entitled to “Free Speech” on private blogs. Here on yours, or on RC. Censorship is up to the discretion of the blog hosts.
Why don’t you document the comments by you that allegedly get deleted from RC, like I document comments by me that get deleted here. Then everyone can judge for him/herself about the content.
REPLY: Oh, I have, and you’ll see them in the upcoming blog post about you and RC. In the meantime, for your own good, I suggest you limit your comments here.
“No one is entitled to “Free Speech” on private blogs. Censorship is up to the discretion of the blog hosts.” yet you complain about two missing and some snipped comments here out of the over 150 you’ve made. Your hypocrisy is boundless.
– Anthony

Anthony Watts wrote in reply to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/20/us-record-lows-outpace-record-highs-127-to-4-this-weekend/#comment-1062782

REPLY: “You and Mr. Courtney are allowed to complain about this to the Internet.”
Allowed?
Wow, just wow, that has to be the most arrogant condescending comment I’ve ever seen.

Really! After you and your friends write comment after comment with statements in which I’m personally attacked and my person is made a topic here, and not the first time, it riles you up when I get a bit snarky. Now, that I call hypocrisy.

Jan P Perlwitz blah, blah, blah, in a condescending tone.