2013 was a cool year in many ways. Most interestingly, the last year this split between highs and lows happened in the USA, in 1993, we had the eruption from Mt. Pinatubo the prior year which ejected so much aerosol into the atmosphere that it blocked sunlight and cooled the planet.
Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1978
This year, 2013, we have no similar large volcanic influence, and so the cause can’t be pinned on an specific aerosol event. It seems that natural variation played a bigger role this time. It also says much about Hansen’s “loaded climate dice”
This table from NCDC pretty well sums up the headline.
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/
Note also the “Last Year to Date” line on the bottom. in 2013, we have less than one-third of the number of record highs as in 2012.
h/t to Doyle Rice at USAToday.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/12/31/record-cold-temperatures/4264237/
Here, from the Wayback Machine, is last year’s table from NCDC:
if anyone has any similar weather record comparisons for the rest of the world, don’t hesitate to list them in comments.
Village Idiot (January 1, 2014 at 12:24 am) “Someone forgot to tell the mangroves”
From your link “But the last bitter freeze in central Florida occurred in 1989, and cold sufficient to kill off mangrove seedlings has not occurred at all in recent years.”
Someone forgot to tell the orange growers that those freezes in the 70’s and 80’s http://flcitrusmutual.com/render.aspx?p=/industry-issues/weather/freeze_timeline.aspx were the last freezes ever and they should not have moved south. And someone forgot to tell the writers in the NYTimes that the weather in Florida is strongly controlled by cyclical patterns in North Atlantic SSTs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
So one regional extreme (2012) is followed by another regional extreme (2013)? Hansen’s loaded climate dice come to mind indeed. Let’s see what happens next year.
Let’s all just hope that we have a gentle slow down off the plateau, and not a cliff.
nevket240 says:
December 31, 2013 at 8:08 pm
“My friends in Thailand are sitting around with big jackets and beanies on. First time in their lives.”
90 degrees plus as per usual in Thailand during the day. Not exactly big jackets and beanie weather!
http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/THXX0002
I suspect if you excluded all stations with less than 80 years of records, most of the “record highs” would disappear.
For instance, for the daily record highs set in June/July, :
1) All were airport sites
2) Only one site was more than 80 yrs old
3) Only one was USHCN.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/pbs-still-pedalling-the-record-temperature-con/
I just took a look at the CET http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Interesting trend over the last few years?
Always good with on-message updates from the “weather’s not climate except when it’s cold” department
if it hits -15f today we (Maine) will break our cold record for the day. was -11f at 530am.
may hit 12 or so today.
cold winter so far.
Village Idiot sorry but the ‘weather’s not climate’ argument is a dead duck , given the numbers of times any extreme weather event has been jumped on as ‘proof’ of AGW .
I fact I will give you 100-1 the first extreme weather event of 2014, no matter what , will follow this pattern.
Dangerous cold in Canada for the last month or more. Hope the polar vortex doesn’t move southward bringing it down here to the mid-Atlantic states like it did in 1994.
Lo Max beat out High Min as well. Last year there were 3.5x as many High Min as Lo Max.
There’s been a striking shift in SSTs in the last week or two, from cold SH and warm NH a fortnight ago to warm SH and cold NH now, especially in the Pacific. Interesting reversal. My tentative prediction of a La Nina Pacific cooling in early 2014 still seems to be on the cards – barely. The heat wave in Argentina is part of this. SSTs are “only” surface, not OHC, but SST is where meteorology meets oceanography.
It is no surprise that we were begining to see more cold records in 2013. This pattern will continue during the next 2-3 decades. Average winter temperatures have been dropping in the Northern Hemisphere , Contiguous US, Europe,and Central England since 1998. During the last decade ,the SST’s for the Northern Hemisphere have been dropping due to mostly the North Atlantic SST decline . AMO is slowly declining and should be negative in 4-5 years . There are fewer strong El NINO’S .The PDO pattern continues to be negative indicating that there is more colder water along the eastern Pacific Ocean than in the western or central Pacific Ocean. In my opinion it is the cooling oceans that are behind the 17 year pause in global climate and the oceans are going to drive the upcoming cooler climate as they shift from the warm mode to the cooler mode in their 70 year cycle
nevket240 says: @ur momisugly December 31, 2013 at 8:08 pm
It is now fairly obvious that the scheme all along was to take humanity down the wrong path to survival and the right path to population decimation.
Warmth produces food, cold does not. Had we spent the last 30 years inventing ways to produce cold weather crops and store them, then millions had a chance….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unfortunately you are correct as this article shows: Want Food Security? Bring Back a National Grain Reserve.
I won’t say what I think of the occupants of Washington D.C. (I don’t want to be banned) but my opinion get lower with each passing year.
climateace says:
December 31, 2013 at 5:31 pm
[SNIP oh, please. Stick this comment about cherry picking …
“Cherry picked ice” (as mentioned by a commenter on one of the posts and made me rotfl) around the “Antarctic research ship” seem to bring the notion of cherry pick to a new level. It is no wonder that some get confused.
AndyG55 says: @ur momisugly January 1, 2014 at 1:53 am
Let’s all just hope that we have a gentle slow down off the plateau, and not a cliff.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed, but a chaotic climate with two ‘Strange Attractors’ indicates a jump from one state to the other that can be very very nasty. That is why this refusal to give up on the CAGW scam is so dangerous.
We need the time to prepare. Even if we do not go into glaciation it is still going to be cool not warm. Thousands of years of a lower level of solar insolation, 9% below the Holocene Optimum, means the oceans are going to gradually cool. That means lower temperatures no matter how much anyone claims the sun is constant and has no effect on climate, no matter how many claims are made for the CO2 magic gas.
Interesting data. But you are quite wrong to attribute the 1993 cooling to Pinatubo eruption. And by the way, that temperature chart you show with it is full of systematic errors from computer processing. They manifest themselves as sharp upward spikes at the beginnings of years, at least ten of them I can see. “Volcanic cooling” which is said to have followed some historic eruptions, simply does not exist. That is because hot eruption gases raise directly to the stratosphere which they warm it at first. Cooling follows a couple of years later but it stays in the stratosphere and never gets down to the troposphere where we live. The myth of volcanic cooling originated because of the ignorance of volcanologists of this fact. What makes the volcanic cooling hypothesis possible is the fact that the global temperature record is made up of an alternation of warm El Nino peaks with cool La Nina valleys in between. They are not synchronized with eruptions which may coincide with an El Nino peak or a La Nina valley, as the case may be. If, by luck, it coincides with an El Nino peak the following La Nina valley is immediately recruited as a “volcanic cooling” belonging to that volcano. If, on the other hand, it coincides with a La Nina valley, what follows it is several years of El Nino warming and no cooling.That mystifies them. Volcanologists are just clueless and are left scratching their head about the mysterious appearance and disappearance of “volcanic” cooling. This does not stop the model makers, however, and they keep showing these coolings in their models whether or not real cooling exists. In recent history, Pinotubo eruption coincided with the peak of the 1991/92 El Nino and the 1993 La Nina that followed was immediately declared to be Pinatubo cooling. It is nothing more than an ordinary La Nina and has nothing to do with volcanism. On the other hand, the eruption of El Chichon in Mexico coincided with the 1982 La Nina. This was immediately followed by the 1983 El Nino warming and the experts could not understand where the expected cooling disappeared. The largest eruption in the twentieth century was Novarupta (Katmai) of Alaska in 1912. There is no record of any cooling associated with it because it just happened to erupt immediately ahead of the large El Nino warming peak that followed. There must have been volcanoes that did produce real cooling but most likely they would have to be in a class with Santorini or Yellowstone to make their mark. To learn more, read pp. 17-21 in my book “What Warming.”
A less warm 2013 is no one-off fluke. It’s the result of multidecadal cycles that will confirm cooling going forward, further invalidate models and mantra, and help confirm those cycle effects of pdo, amo, and solar.
Someone forgot to be patient and read this thread just out! The claim has been debunked by someone who became suspicious.
Think replanting after earlier frost damage being the ’cause’ Village Idiot.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/another-conservation-success-story-hijacked-by-climate-alarmists/
Thanks for clipping Climate A’s wings, my mouse scroll is wearing out bypassing that characters posts.
Last winter here in the NWT Canada weather went to -30C early and stayed there for weeks, this winter came in slow, mildly warmer than usual, but has gone to low 30s and early 40s for last few weeks.
Seems to be following that approximately 60 year cycle from the temperature records.
After -30 it is interesting the way the moisture clears out of the air, the only fog comes from human sources.
Windless and sunless, the waste heat rises straight up from every chimney and exhaust pipe, gradually a manmade fog forms over this town. Crystal clear outside town.
The biting cold, increasing cost of vital heating fuel and definite lack of any unusual weather should convince even our elected idiots, but they are well insulated from reality by floods of federal money.
It is also interesting to look at the other two daily records: high minimum, and low maximum.
Since the mechanism for CO2-based warming is increased heat trapping, one would mainly expect the warming to show up in record-high nighttime minimum temperatures, more than record-high maximums. Yet the record-low maximum temperature (perhaps associated with increased cloudiness? There’s no other obvious physical mechanism that should cause these) exceeds the record-high maximums as well.
For Canada the winter temperature departures from 1961-1990 averages [as per Environment Canada data] have been basically flat since 1998 when measured on the National level. However regionally it is quite a different picture. 7 of 11 major temperature regions represented by about 53 % of Canadian land areas [, mostly western and north western Canada,] have had winter temperatures declining since 1998. For another 20 % of the land areas involving Northeastern forest areas ( Ontario and Quebec ] , the winter temperatures have been flat since 1998. Only the Atlantic region and Arctic Tundra, Mountains and Fiords, representing about 27 % of the land area show winter warming since 1998 mostly due to the past warm Atlantic Ocean. However the Canadian Arctic region has started to cool post 2010 and winter temperature departures have already been 4-5 degrees cooler in the Arctic, tundra mountains and fiords. The current winter looks like it is going to be extremely cold across most of Canada but especially in the west, northwest and the Great Lakes region where temperatures around -45 C are being recorded. January and February are predicted to have below normal temperatures . I see Canadian winters getting even colder over the next several decades and new winter records being set as both coastal areas and the Arctic also cool due to cooling ocean SST. All this is happening despite the IPCC predictions for warmer winters for North America.. Canadian spring weather has also been getting cooler and this is not good news for the American tornado season where cold Canadian spring weather has meant bigger and more frequent tornadoes [like 2013 and 1974] in United States.
herkimer (January 1, 2014 at 4:13 pm) “Canadian spring weather has also been getting cooler and this is not good news for the American tornado season where cold Canadian spring weather has meant bigger and more frequent tornadoes [like 2013 and 1974] in United States.”
You must have meant 2011
The Ice Age is coming,.. The Ice Age is coming… Here’s a half-hour episode of “In Search Of” from the 1970’s, split up into 3 parts. Back then the “climate scientists” were panicing about the coming Ice Age…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tokbiZW3gVY
One might also point out to the Village Idiot that in addition to the mangroves being planted, and it having been so cold that it was “Raining Iguanas” in Florida just 3 years or so back, there’s been a few minor problems for the Warming Florida meme… like snow in Orlando… From:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/frozen-florida-citrus/
a quote:
Unlike January’s freeze, when snow and sleet fell in the Orlando area , no precipitation is forecast for the rest of this week in Central Florida.
Also this bit:
http://www.clickorlando.com/weather/26110737/detail.html
20-Degree Temps Coming To Central Fla.
Ocala Could See Low Temperature Hit 19 Degrees
The coldest air of the season is pushing through Central Florida.
ORLANDO, Fla. — The coldest air of the season will blast Central Florida by late Monday night and record-low temperatures in the high teens to mid-20s are expected across the region.
Hard-freeze warnings — temperatures below 28 degrees for at least three hours — have been issued for Orlando and all of Central Florida.
The record-low temperature of 28 degrees for Dec. 14 was set in 1962 in Orlando. Record lows in Daytona Beach and Melbourne for the same date are 26 degrees, both of which were also set in 1962. All three records could be broken early Tuesday morning.
Ocala, which is located about 75 miles northwest of Orlando, is forecast to have a low of 19 degrees early Tuesday morning.
Now, admittedly, that was in 2010, but it kind of knocks the stuffing out of that Mangrove claim…
On topic:
Just think what the records would be like if the thermometers were well located and not subject to “adjustment”…