UPDATE2: Gosh. Shouldn’t Dr. Cullen know more than McKibben and Brad Johnson?! (h/t to Marc Morano) – Anthony
Here’s the SST anomaly map she cites as proof in her post about the issue at Climate Central. Note that actual temperatures in the ocean are quite cold.
Dear Chicken Little: The Sky Is Falling (It’s Snowing) But Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Off New England Are NOT Unusual
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
UPDATE: If you should run into any alarmists over the next couple of days, remind them of the Northeast Blizzard of 1978.
########################
Global warming alarmists are predictable. If they see elevated sea surface temperature anomalies on a map anywhere close to a weather event, they immediately claim manmade global warming contributed, or will contribute, to the weather. They erred that way with Hurricane Sandy—sea surface temperatures along Sandy’s storm track haven’t warmed in 70+ years—and they’ve done it again with the blizzard threatening New England today. Refer to the WattsUpWithThat post Propagandist Brad Johnson of ‘Forecast the Facts’ tries to make the pending East Coast blizzard about the ocean ‘warming’ – Fails.
Anyone who has followed my posts over the past 4 years about the natural warming of satellite-era sea surface temperatures understands there is nothing in the data to indicate that manmade greenhouse gases played any part in the warming. That is, the data indicates Mother Nature, not manmade greenhouse gases, was responsible for the warming over the past 31 years. The same holds true for ocean heat content data.
Figure 1 is a map of the sea surface temperature anomalies (Reynolds OI.v2) for a portion of the North Atlantic. It captures the data for the week centered on Wednesday January 30, 2013. The map was created at the NOAA NOMADS website, using the Reynolds Optimum Interpolation sea surface temperature data. I’ve used the contour levels of 0.5 deg C, with white set at zero, which are settings often used by NOAA. Obviously, last week sea surface temperature anomalies were elevated near the New England coast, but the data, as we will see, reveals that there’s nothing unusual about those levels. We’ll use the coordinates of 35N-45N, 77W-67W for the data in the following graphs.
Figure 1
SHORT-TERM WEEKLY DATA
Figure 2 presents the weekly sea surface temperature anomalies off the New England coast, starting with the week centered on Wednesday January 3, 1990 and ending with the week of January 30, 2013. The base years for anomalies are the standard climatology of 1971-2000 from the NOAA NOMADS website. The horizontal red line represents the most recent weekly value of +0.55 deg C. Sure does look like it’s been warmer many times over the past 2+ decades.
Figure 2
LONG-TERM MONTHLY DATA
We have to switch datasets to NOAA’s ERSST.v3b for the long-term data. The data for the month of February 2013 will not be available until early in March, so we’ll use the January 2013 value for the most recent temperature anomaly for the New England coastal waters—the red horizontal line. The current anomalies were exceeded by a good amount in the 1940s. And they’ve regularly been exceeded as far back as the 1850s and 60s.
Figure 3
And to drive the point home, Figure 4 is a graph of the January sea surface temperatures (not anomalies) for the New England coastal waters from 1854 to 2013. Sea surface temperatures were much warmer during the 1930s and 40s.
Figure 4
CLOSING
It’s difficult to claim the recent increases in manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for the warm sea surface temperatures off the New England coast, when the those values were regularly exceeded 70 to 80 years ago.
Alarmists will take any opportunity to claim manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for weather events, such as Hurricane Sandy, and now the upcoming New England Blizzard. It’s often easy to illustrate the errors in their claims. Another example is the Russian heat wave of 2010 which Trenberth and Fasullo tried (and failed) to attribute to the warming of sea surface temperatures. Refer to the post here.
Alarmists, of course, will continue to make unfounded claims, and I will be happy to show how ridiculous those claims are.
This is a preliminary report. Sea surface temperature data for the week centered on Wednesday February 6, 2013 will not be available until Monday February 11. I’ll be happy to update this post then.
SOURCES
The weekly Reynolds OI.v2 dataset is available through the NOAA NOMADS website. And the ERSST.v3b dataset can be accessed through the KNMI Climate Explorer.
DATA REVEAL THE OCEANS WARMED NATURALLY
Earlier I noted that satellite-era sea surface temperature data indicate the oceans warmed naturally, not via manmade greenhouse gases. NOAA’s ocean heat content data also do not support the hypothesis of manmade global warming. Refer to my recent essay titled “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge”, which is linked to my blog post here. Refer also to the two-part video series prepared for the WattsUpWithThat (WUWT-TV) special linked to the post The Natural Warming of the Global Oceans. And of course there’s my book Who Turned on the Heat?
Who Turned on the Heat? is intended for persons (with or without technical backgrounds) interested in learning about El Niño and La Niña events and in understanding the natural causes of the warming of our global oceans for the past 31 years. Because land surface air temperatures simply exaggerate the natural warming of the global oceans over annual and multidecadal time periods, the vast majority of the warming taking place on land is natural as well. The book is the product of years of research of the satellite-era sea surface temperature data and ocean heat content data that are available to the public via the internet. It presents how the data accounts for its warming—and there are no indications the warming was caused by manmade greenhouse gases. None at all.
Who Turned on the Heat? was introduced in the blog post Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about El Niño and La Niña… …Well Just about Everything. The Updated Free Preview includes the Table of Contents; the Introduction; the beginning of Section 1, with the cartoon-like illustrations; the discussion About the Cover; and the Closing.
Please buy a copy. Credit/Debit Card through PayPal. You do NOT need to open a PayPal account. Simply scroll down to the “Don’t Have a PayPal Account” purchase option. It’s only US$8.00
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For the Warmistas, in order to explain cooling, it’s any port in a storm.
Caleb says:
February 8, 2013 at 1:11 pm
1978 was 35 years ago. Parents come to my Childcare with children and a few grey hairs, and they weren’t even alive back then. Therefore it is helpful to direct them to old pictures, for example at:
=====================================================================
Great pictures. They seem to mix the Midwest and Northeast blizzards.
Thanks, Bob.
> Ralph B says:
> February 8, 2013 at 8:02 am
> What I like is her value sign facing the wrong way…didn’t she want to say > as in greater than?
No, she got it right. You (and others here) got it wrong. The prediction is 18-24 inches which is up to 2ft (that is, less than or equal to 2 feet).
NE blizzards of 69 (and iirc 62/63) dumped 40+ inches here in bangor maine area.
how much agw was that?
lets not forget 1898 (iirc) that changed rivers and coastlines here in NE area.
damn humans LOL
Heidi Cullen is nothing but a quack. I am still amazed she was called to testify recently in congress…to have her as one of the opposing lecturers against Richard Lindzen is an insult to Lindzen’s intelligence.
Cullen claimed a flood in Tennessee was a 1 in a 1000 year event and also misrepresented the temperature increase from a doubling of co2. Lindzen gave the correct answer and then she basically presented positive feedbacks as settled science and said we can expect like 8 degrees fahrenheit of warming because she is an idiot.
Dr. Cullen tweets that the storm “could dump < 2 ft. of snow". That's less than 2 feet of snow. Heck, she could have tweeted that the storm is going to drop 2 ft.” (greater than) and didn’t know the difference? Just wonderin’.
My previous post is not what I typed. She could have tweeted that the storm is going to drop less than 10 feet of snow and been just as accurate. Do you suppose she meant greater than 2 feet and didn’t know the correct symbol to use, or didn’t know the difference?
The storm of 1888 dropped 47″ of snow on Albany. Imagine trying to deal with that mess with no power equipment.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=65
I’m beginning to wonder whether Heidi Cullen’s PhD was in Dramaqueenery.
downdraft says:
February 8, 2013 at 2:36 pm
They did have power equipment. Here’s a 4 HP snow roller – http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/item/uvmsctous2013 . Snow rollers predated snow plows and were used to pack the snow so 1 and 2 HP sleighs could pass readily.
Ralph B says: & Billy Liar says: & Greg Goodman says:
February 8, 2013 at 8:02 am
“What I like is her value sign facing the wrong way . . . ”
I’ll go with Dr. Heidi on this one, although to be safe I would have made that 2 a 4 . Making a prediction is easy if you know the outcome.
A glance at the NOAA Storm Total Snow Forecast map : http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stormtotalsnowfcst1.png?w=640&h=553 reveals large areas of > 24 inches predicted across Massachusetts, including Boston. Dr. Cullen referred to the #blizzard, and not just snowfall through 1PM Saturday. I think she got her greater than/less than symbol backwards.
jim rosart says:
February 8, 2013 at 1:21 pm ??
For what it is worth, and that might not be much, the wiki entry on efficiency of photosynthesis claims a value of 3% to 6%. To work from there you need to know how much photosynthesizing material is involved and that is a three dimensional thing, including all land and water. Also, what is meant by “long term?” What does one do with grass, woody plants, fast growing trees, Bristlecone Pines, buried algae, and so on? I’ll guess any attempt to do this will have wide error bars.
The value of 5% is given here (p.2):
http://www.cas.manchester.ac.uk/documents/hughcoe/lecture62007%5B1%5D.pdf
However, note the difference in language, making it hard to know what is being said. The language may imply a world-wide sq. m. number or may imply the same thing as in the wiki entry. This is not a problem I want to work on – unless there is lots of money involved.
Bob,
Trenberth and Hansen claim 4% and 8% increase in water vapor fuels extreme weather.
Can you post info about the water vapor content when you debunk these claims?
Thanks
The guest posting by Bob Tisdale says in part:
“sea surface temperatures along Sandy’s storm track haven’t warmed in
70+ years”.
Yet, once Sandy left the Gulf Stream, that storm entered waters that were
anomalously warm, and probably did warm over the past 40 or 100 years.
I think that arguments against Sandy being worsened by global warming
get better if they are based on the kind of storm that andy became shortly
after leaving the Gulf Stream. Sandy did not landfall as a hurricane, but as
a primarily extratropical type although hybrid storm.
Extratropical cyclones are powered mainly by horizontal temperature
gradient. Arctic-concentrated warming would weaken such storms in the
northern hemisphere.
Also, nasty hybrid extratropical/tropical storms are not new. There was
the October 1991 “Perfect Storm”, Agnes of June 1972, Hazel of October
1954 (hurricane-qualifying sustained winds in and through to 70-75 miles
north of Toronto), and the Saxby Gale hurricane of October 1869 – with a
flood record for the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia still standing.
As A kid in the 1950’s just south of Syracuse NY, I can remember climbing up the snow drift to stand on the roof of the garage and stepping OVER the telephone lines to go play in the field across the street. I spent the winters on cross country skis because I was so short I would sink in over my head if I tried to go outside in just boots. I remember the winter of 1978 too. Back on skis again this time in the Rochester NY area. We also had a doozy of a snow storm in South Carolina in the winter of 1972/73.
As E.M. Smith said in another comment, time to send the CAGW crowd off to the rest homes to talk to the old grannies about the weather in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s.
Donald L Klipstein says: “Yet, once Sandy left the Gulf Stream, that storm entered waters that were
anomalously warm, and probably did warm over the past 40 or 100 years”
Actually, sea surface temperatures along the extratropical portion of Sandy’s track have actually declined over the past 70 years:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-4.png
The graph is from this post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/october-2012-sea-surface-temperatures-and-anomalies-along-sandys-path-were-not-unusual/
And a map of Sandy’s storm track is here:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-2.jpg
mojomojo says: “Trenberth and Hansen claim 4% and 8% increase in water vapor fuels extreme weather.
“Can you post info about the water vapor content when you debunk these claims?”
How are they determining those percentages? Climate models?
mojomojo: Sorry for the shortness of the last reply. The electric power is shutting off here occassionally. I’ve lost two relies so far tonight. Let’s hope I can finish the rest of this one.
You would have to let me know what dataset they’re using and how they’re determining there’s an additional 4% to 8% increase in water vapor. Climate modelers like Hansen and Trenberth often give climate model results, but climate models have little basis in reality. Example: Climate models say global precipitation should be increasing, but satellite-era precipitation data shows global precipitation has decreased:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/figure-21.png
The graph is from this post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/model-data-precipitation-comparison-cmip5-ipcc-ar5-model-simulations-versus-satellite-era-observations/
Regards
No, she got it right. You (and others here) got it wrong. The prediction is 18-24 inches which is up to 2ft (that is, less than or equal to 2 feet).
You need to check your comprehension skills. She uses “life-threatening” and surely intends to convey the message that there will be a lot of snow.
Do you think she wants to say “life threatening blizzard … could dump less than two feet”?
No, she wanted to say “this storm could dump more than two feet.”
Bob,
Trenberth 4% Hansen 8% were both making news soundbites a few years back.
As far as I know they didnt bother to cite any actual studies.
I guess ,that was the origin of the current MSM meme, that says higher temps cause increased water vapor which is steroids to extreme weather..
The increased water vapor is what is supposedly fueling extreme weather.
Im curious what the facts are behind Trenberth and Hansens % statements .
But more important would be a refutation of water vapor increase at specific weather events such as Sandy and todays NE blizzard and every extreme weather event in the future.
thanks
My guess is that Hansen was deriving a hypothetical figure of 8% increase in WV from 1C rise in temp .But presented the figure as fact.
While NOAA measurements show a global decrease in water vapor for the past 60 years.
jim rosart says:
February 8, 2013 at 1:21 pm
“Completely off topic question. Everyone is talking about the energy budget e.g. watts per square metre in v.s. watts per square metre out. What about energy that gets chemically converted and is trapped long term. Is that not what fossil fuels are? Shouldnt work performed by incoming radiation be included in the energy budget. Anyone know how many watts per square metre this might involve?”
Photosynthesis, like solar cells, is endothermic, meaning, the energy converted into chemicals in the case of plants or the energy converted to electricity in the case of PV, is not converted into heat.
Photosynthetic plants convert about 7% of the light. A square meter of surface receives 1 kW during full insolation (it’s 1350 W/m^2 at TOA but the atmosphere is not perfectly transparent). And we can assume that in fertile areas 100% of that square meter is covered with phosynthetic plants. Seasonal effects in the higher latitudes play a role of course.
But about the trapping: Since white mould has developed no new coal is formed – the mould breaks down lignin. Our coal deposits stem from a time when wood did not rot away. Lignin is a biological polymer and the fungi had to develop enzymes to break it down.
If we don’t use the wood it will be consumed by fungi. No significant “trapping” occurs anymore.