Those that want to make today’s weather seem like the “worst ever” often make ludicrous claims trying to link weather to high CO2 levels. For example, that extra CO2 gives the weather “personality“, or even more extreme linkage, like this:
Climate change means increased severe weather and asthma attacks. See what it means for your state: http://t.co/Pe9mOTVAro
— US EPA Research (@EPAresearch) July 1, 2013
and this
Climate Depot has a headline from Goddard that touts all the weather (not climate) issues of 2013 in the context of the highest ever reported CO2 concentration in modern times. Unfortunately, the link contained no proof, only claims. I decided to provide the proof.
First, about that 400PPM of CO2:
Unfortunately, they backed down from the claim later saying:
‘Carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere did not break the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million at a Hawaiian observatory last week, according to a revised reading from the nation’s climate observers.
The current level as of this writing is at: 395.50ppm and has actually gone down since the announcement of breaking the 400 ppm mark:
![co2_weekly_mlo[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/co2_weekly_mlo1-e1376168771698.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Next: let’s take each of the claims below and provide the context for proof:
- Coldest summer on record at the North Pole
- Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006
- Record high August Antarctic ice extent
- No major hurricane strikes for eight years
- Slowest tornado season on record
- No global warming for 17 years
- Second slowest fire season on record
- Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008
Coldest summer on record at the North Pole:
Easy to prove, as we’ve covered this issue recently here. The DMI plot of Arctic temperature for 2013 (at the end pause of this animation) hasn’t gone above the climatic normals since this dataset began in 1958:
Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006:
Plausible, but is debatable, depending on what data you look at, for example, this plot from DMI:
![icecover_current_new[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/icecover_current_new1.png?quality=75)
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Others on the WUWT sea ice page suggest it could go either way. What isn’t debatable though is that there has been a dramatic slowing of loss of Arctic ice extent in the past couple of weeks, as shown below, and that the current extent is well within the +/- 2 standard deviation.
Source: arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.anom.1979-2008
Record high August Antarctic ice extent:
That’s easy to show, at the end of July starting into August, as Paul Homewood demonstrates:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/daily/data/
Since then, Sunshine Hours puts it in context with other years:
After taking a small jog sideways and downwards, Antarctic Sea Extent is back to moving up.
Day 221 is in 2nd place. 2010 holds the daily record. Can 2013 catch the 2010 record pace again? Wait and see.
No major hurricane strikes for eight years:
As we pointed out at the beginning of the hurricane season on June 1st, Hurricane season begins with a new record hurricane drought for the USA
The graph above provides an update to data on the remarkable ongoing US “intense hurricane drought.” When the Atlantic hurricane season starts next June 1, it will have been 2,777 days since the last time an intense (that is a Category 3, 4 or 5) hurricane made landfall along the US coast (Wilma in 2005). Such a prolonged period without an intense hurricane landfall has not been observed since 1900. – Dr. Roger Pielke Jr
It is now at 2847 days since Hurricane Wilma (the last Cat3 hurricane to strike the USA) on Oct 24th, 2005 as of August 10th, 2013.
Slowest tornado season on record:
Easy to prove, just look at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center Data, which shows we are near a record low for tornado activity in the USA:
![torngraph-big[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/torngraph-big1.png?quality=75)
![torgraph-big[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/torgraph-big1.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data
No global warming for 17 years:
This statement gets a number of people riled up, but it is clear that global warming has slowed to a crawl. Even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit this.
Last year we had this:
Now a year later:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
and
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend
Slight cooling in the troposphere, slight warming at the surface, both virtually flat.
Of course after the latest HadCRUT4 “adjustments” are added in, some can claim it is actually warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/trend
Second slowest fire season on record:
Actually, just for this record set. The National Fire Information Center says:
2013 is actually lowest in the last decade for the number of fires, and second lowest for acreage.
Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008:
Rutgers snow lab shows this clearly.
![nhland_season1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/nhland_season11.gif)
1978 was tops, followed by 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2008.
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
We live in interesting times of nearly 400ppm of Co2 concentration in our atmosphere.
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Thanks for your reply Richard. The dynamics are the result of the processes. The relevant annual processes are the biosphere (which I stated as trees leafing out and leaves turning brown, etc) I left out ocean biosphere which should also maximize in the NH summer. I should not have left that process off my list.
But I specifically exclude cold ocean consumption and warm ocean production of CO2. My reason is very simple, the earth’s average temperature peaks in July, but the CO2 troughs in July. The CO2 cannot be lowest as the ocean surface is warmest if overall ocean temperature were a factor in the annual cycle. But I realize the ocean is much more complex than an average, it consists of different areas producing and consuming CO2 throughout the year, particularly consuming in downwelling areas near the poles and producing in warmer locations.
But I doubt the is a major annual factor for the reason I gave above. Nor are 1b, 2b, and 2c in your list. That leaves leaves. My preferred theory is the one from the scientific mainstream which is that leafing out of trees is the primary cause of the annual trough and decomposition causes the annual rise in NH autumn. But again I need to stress that I do not know the processes well enough myself to confirm that and I also acknowledge that there are lots of uncertainties in the science itself.
eric1skeptic:
I am writing to acknowledge your post addressed to me at August 13, 2013 at 5:21 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/10/what-the-year-of-living-dangerously-at-nearly-400-ppm-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-looks-like/#comment-1388400
As I said, I do not agree with what you call the “mainstream” view and I could debate it. I choose not to debate it because – as you and I both say – there is no data capable of rejecting almost any hypothesis.
Hence, I merely acknowledge your post and give ‘the last word’ to you in that post. If I have missed something you wanted me to address then please say.
Richard
“””””…….eric1skeptic says:
August 13, 2013 at 2:52 am
george e. smith (August 12, 2013 at 12:18 pm) “Eric, I thought I had already explained that. In the summer time, the additional open water in the Arctic ocean is another 8-12 million square km, of very cold water, which has been highly depleted of dissolved CO2, by being blocked off from the atmosphere for much of the year. During that time, that ocean ice has blocked CO2 from the water, the Temperature gradient in the water, has pumped CO2 into the deeper waters.”
George, that’s not a bad theory except the timing is a little off. CO2 reaches its trough in July and the open water reaches a peak in September. Furthermore we would expect a lag from the absorption of CO2 in that open water to the measured trough, so we would expect the trough after September……..”””””””
At the start of the arctic ice melt in Feb-Mar, it is the dead of winter, and the Arctic Temp is around 243K. The Arctic ocean has been blocked off from the atmosphere by ice, for months, so the colde water Temperature and the Temperature gradient, have pumped surface CO2 to the depths (solubility gradient), so the water immediately under the ice is very cold, and highly depleted of CO2 relative to its Henry’s law equilibrium value.
So when the melt starts, and more open water appears, we have depleted cold ocean water in contact with the highest levels of atmospheric CO2, so the rate of exchange between air and water is accelerated, due to the unbalance from equilibrium.
So CO2 is removed at a faster rate during the early stages of the ice melt, when the atmospheric CO2 excess is highest and the exposed water Temperature is least, and most depleted.
As spring turns to summer, the atmospheric CO2 excess is lowering, the surface waters are warming, which lowers the equilibrium CO2 water fraction, and those warming waters are becoming less depleted due to the continually dissolving CO2; so the exchange process slows down as the summer progresses.
The max and min atmospheric CO2 times occur at roughly the same times as the max and min ice extent.
Also, that CO2 data is for the ML CO2; not the Artic CO2, which has a much greater cycle amplitude, and a different time phase as well.
I’m not up to speed on how the arctic ocean biological uptake is timed, the whales seem to get out of town fairly late in the regrowth phase, judging by the occasional trapping by sea ice.
I’m perfectly happy to entertain anyone’s expert input, as to why the Arctic CO2 cycle is not mostly due to the open ocean water growth and melt cycle; but the available data sure matches that thesis very closely. Certainly much closer than ANY available computer climate model matches the observed surface, and lower troposphere Temperature data.
I can’t prove MY model is correct; but any naysayer can prove me wrong with a single observation that contradicts it.
In 1771 Joseph Priestley the English radical churchman and devoted scientist, lit a candle and put it under a jar. The candle burned for a while then went out. Likewise a mouse placed under the jar soon expired. Other people had noted these events. It seemed to Priestley that the air in the jar had been somehow ‘injured’ by the burning candle and the breathing mouse so that now nothing could live or burn in it. If so, somewhere in nature there must be some way of undoing that damage; otherwise countless candles and mice and other agents since time beganwould have so degraded the air that no life would bepossible on Earth. There was no evidence he argued, that the air was no less wholesomenow than it had ever been. How could that be? What was constanly restoring the quality of the air?
Priestley guessed that green plants were involved, that they were able to return to the air whatever it was that the burning candles and breathing mice had removed or poisoned. To test the idea, he placed a sprig of mint under the jar with the burning candle, which of course soon went out. Priestley gave the mint plenty of time, nearly four weeks, to do what he suspected it would do.
To avoid disturbing the jar, he had to relight the candle by using a ‘burning glass’ to focus the heat of the sun onto the candle wick. It burst into flame,and burnt as brightly as it ever had. Priestley was delighted; he had found out how to ‘restore’ the injured air, and even more, had found that plants carry out this act of resoration all the time, it was agreat moment.
This was during the time of phlogiston chemistry before oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide had been discovered. So even before its discovery it was known that ‘carbon dioxide emissions’ due to combustion and breathing processes were not irreversble and were probably treated by plants and as we know now absrbed in rainwater and seawater.
Phlogiston warmists must realise that injured air can and is being restored.
Robert S says: @ur momisugly August 14, 2013 at 3:04 am
Thanks
A bit if science history I was unaware of.
Gail Combs says:
August 14, 2013 at 11:21 am
Priestley was in correspondence with Benjamin Franklin. on learning of his results, Franklin wrote, ‘I hope this [rehabilitation of air by plants] will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses,which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening from an opinion of their being unwholesome,’