Top sticky post – new posts will appear below this one.
This map below updates every hour, and shows city temperatures along with temperature gradients. Can you believe 18F in Atlanta (midday) at the time of this writing? Low temperature records are being shattered in many USA cities with cold records outnumbering warm records almost 5 to 1. This thread will update with weather news as it happens.
Look at all of the cold records:
| Total Records: | 1045 |
| Rainfall: | 127 |
| Snowfall: | 351 |
| High Temp: | 85 |
| Low Temp: | 162 |
| Low Max Temp: | 300 |
| High Min Temp: | 20 |
Cold records total: 462
Warm records total: 105
Source: http://wx.hamweather.com/maps/climate/records/1week/us.html
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Update: here is WeatherBell’s map being used for The Drudge Report. It represents the air temperature at 2 meters above the surface (you may need to manually refresh browser to see it.) Note the United States Avg: value, which is below freezing for the CONUS.
UPDATE2: record breaking cold in Atlanta
![image_full1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/image_full11.gif)
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@ur momisugly RichardLH
Maybe this is my personal bias, but I see an alarmingly high rate of increase in recent years looking at the temperature data on that wikipedia page. It is very difficult to pick out the 100 year cycle from the noise, but the recent increase is very obvious. It may be an added effect of the end of a cold period and something else like increased CO2 concentrations, but whatever it is, it is apparent that something is different. It’s possibly a perfect storm of natural cycles, but it seems more likely that something is changing our planet. That is my interpretation, anyway.
How do you interpret the high rate of increased temps since 1900? In a little over one century, we’ve gone from a cold period of the little ice age to greater than the peak temps of the medieval warm period. That is a little alarming to me.
Clearly I still don’t see how this undercuts the fundamental AGW hypothesis that excessive CO2 production is warming the earth, assuming that’s your point. Am I missing something?
Also, even if the current temp increase is due partially to natural cycles and will partially reverse someday, is the anthropogenic contribution something we should ignore?
Bob S. says:
January 9, 2014 at 9:34 am
“@ur momisugly RichardLH
Maybe this is my personal bias, but I see an alarmingly high rate of increase in recent years looking at the temperature data on that wikipedia page.”
The main problem is to do with the accuracy and coverage of the data. The later we go in time to the current date the better and better the quality of information in both dimensions.
This means that as we go further back in time (and switch from measurements to proxies) the resolution in values, geographic coverage and time precision decreases.
This makes interpretation of ‘old’ data quite challenging and very subject to ‘personal bias’.
So I tend to just observe the high quality data as ‘fact’ and the most recent data (satellite) as being even better than the thermometers. The earlier data I treat as ‘indicative’ rather than ‘fact’ and base my conclusions appropriately.
There does not appear to be any doubt that there is a 60 year cycle. It is even starting to show quite clearly in the satellite data. That is likely to dominate the short term (next 10 years?) I think. The longer ~100 year is the guessing game. Are we at a peak or still climbing?
And how much of this is CO2 and how much other factors? Well I cannot in all conscience make it all CO2. There may well be a proportion to that, but how large? Observing that fitting a lid to a boiling pot could turn it into a pressure cooker cannot be disputed, but it does rather depend on how well the lid fits!
Unfortunately the only real way to know is wait and see. Fits badly with this internet driven age I know!
@ur momisugly RichardLH
I believe we are in agreement!
I do not know how much of the increase is do to CO2, but I still find myself convinced that it is not insignificant. I can base this in fact no more than others can do for the opposing view. So that, I suppose, is my opinion based on the data in front of me.
John from the EU says on January 8, 2014 at 3:14 am
The cold is coming to Europe next week. Me hopes for the same record cold as the US had.
John – let’s hope not. Please read the following,
Regards, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1462890
An Open Letter to Baroness Verma
“All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale”.
– Baroness Verma
I have no Sunspot Number data before 1700, but the latter part of the Maunder Minimum had 2 back-to-back low Solar Cycles with SSNmax of 58 in 1705 and 63 in 1717 .
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/solar-data/solar-indices/sunspot-numbers/international/tables/
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/image/annual.gif
The coldest period of the Maunder was ~1670 to ~1700 (8.48dC year average Central England Temperatures) but the coldest year was 1740 (6.84C year avg CET).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
The Dalton Minimum had 2 back-to-back low SC’s with SSNmax of 48 in 1804 and 46 in 1816. Tambora erupted in 1815.
Two of the coldest years in the Dalton were 1814 (7.75C year avg CET) and 1816 (7.87C year avg CET).
Now Solar Cycle 24 is a dud with SSNmax estimated at ~65, and very early estimates suggest SC25 will be very low as well.
The warmest recent years for CET were 2002 to 2007 inclusive that averaged 10.55C.
I suggest with confidence that 10.5C is substantially warmer as a yearly average than 8.5C, and the latter may not provide a “lovely year for Chrysanths”.
I further suggest with confidence that individual years averaging 7.8C or even 6.8C are even colder, and the Chrysanths will suffer.
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
As always in these matters, I hope to be wrong. These are not numbers, they are real people, who “loved and were loved”.
Best regards to all, Allan MacRae
Turning and tuning in the widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear the falconer…
– Yeats
Bob S. says:
January 9, 2014 at 10:54 am
“@ur momisugly RichardLH
I believe we are in agreement!
I do not know how much of the increase is do to CO2, but I still find myself convinced that it is not insignificant.”
I suspect that you assign a larger proportion of the rise since 1840 to CO2 than I do.
My problem is that CO2 before then cannot have been responsible for the drop TO 1840 (at least I can find no evidence that it did).
So, at best, I cannot assign more than about half of the rise to CO2 since then. And that makes the sensitivity calculation way too small for it to be a real problem in the future.
I suspect that ‘natural causes’ have been given an insufficient weight with all the problems to science that an observation of that nature (pun) creates.
@Bob S.
Took a little break for real life. Now, just several small notes/questions. Forgive me if this is repetitive of other discussions. I don’t have time to read everything. (I am amazed at how well you have kept up on these discussions.)
1. If, as you have noted the rhythm of the temperature changes over the last century is dominantly natural, why do we need to rid the world economy of carbon-based fuels? What is the utility in that if it is not causing climate catastrophe?
2. You seem to have some experience with solar/wind. However, there are facts that make conversion to these power sources in most of the world impractical. Both take immense tracts of land to replicate what one carbon/nuclear power source does in a much smaller foot print. The microclimate changes from solar/wind (heat islands and sound vibration), plus the impact to fauna (bird kills, especially of raptors, along with bats both from windmills and very hot collectors) make these problematic on large scales. In addition, both produce intermittent energy which must be backed up by conventional production (for industrial/electronic applications), thus demanding duplicate production and inefficient use of the back up source (usually natural gas).
3. The world’s poor are definitively harmed when they are prevented from advancing to 1st world living standards because of lack of adequate reliable energy. In the event of naturally occurring disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) it is 1st world technology, construction and infrastructure that militates the death and destruction.
4. When I note that Methane may likely not have a fossil source, I am suggesting that it may not be a legacy fuel (i.e. the leavings of a past, no longer operative process). Methane fields regenerate. If Methane is currently being produced by the earth (through nuclear reaction or heat deep in the mantel) then it may not swiftly “run out”. The fact that it is produced without carbon-based life forms on other planets makes this a possibility that needs to be explored.
5. I am sorry you found Monkton’s article more contentious than you care. I am used to those from British government who express witty and combative reparte (such as on the floor of Parliament) and therefore take it in its cultural context.
Thank you again for being so kind as to take my thoughts in serious discussion.
@Dire Wolf
Thank you for your patient and sensible comments. Some thoughts:
In 2002 I was asked by my Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (“APEGA”) to debate in writing the issue of catastrophic humanmade global warming and the proposed Kyoto Protocol.
[PEGG debate, reprinted at their request by several professional journals, the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae]
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
We knew with confidence based on the evidence that global warming alarmism was technically false, extremist and wasteful.
We clearly stated in our 2002 debate:
On global warming:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
On green energy:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
On real pollution:
“Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.”
On squandering resources:
“Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.”
I suggest that our four above statements are now demonstrably correct, within a high degree of confidence.
To date, every major dire prediction by the IPCC and the global warming alarmists has failed to materialize.
I suggest that we, and a few others like us, have been essentially correct in our predictions to date.
I suggest that the individual’s predictive track record is perhaps the only objective measure of one’s competence.
Regards, Allan
More thoughts:
The problem with the fractious global warming debate is that it has become a political debate between Right and Left, but should have always been a scientific debate between true and false.
The “mainstream” global warming debate centres on the magnitude of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (“ECS”) to atmospheric CO2, which is the primary subject of contention between global warming alarmists (aka “warmists”) and climate skeptics (aka “skeptics”).
Warmists typically say ECS is high, greater than ~~3 degrees C [3C/(2xCO2)] and therefore DANGEROUS global warming will result, whereas skeptics say ECS is 1C or less and any resulting global warming will NOT be dangerous.
The scientific evidence to date strongly suggests that if one had to pick a side, the skeptics are more likely to be correct.
However, BOTH sides of this factious debate are in all probability technically WRONG. In January 2008 I demonstrated that CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales*, so the mainstream debate requires that “the future is causing the past”, which I suggest is demonstrably false.
In climate science we do not even agree on what drives what, and it is probable that the majority, who reside on BOTH sides of the ECS mainstream debate, are both technically WRONG.
Hypothesis:
Based on the preponderance of evidence, temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature, so ECS may not exist at all at the “macro” scale, and may be utterly irrelevant to climate science except at the “micro” (and materially insignificant) scale.
There may be other significant sources of CO2 that contribute to its increase in the atmosphere, but increasing CO2 just does not have a significant or measureable impact on global warming (or cooling), which is almost entirely natural in origin.
I therefore suggest that the oft-fractious “mainstream debate” between warmists and skeptics about the magnitude of ECS is materially irrelevant. ECS, if it exists at all, is so small that it just does not matter.
Wait 5 to 10 more years – I suggest that by then most serious climate scientists will accept the above hypo. Many will claim they knew it all along… 🙂
________
* If ECS (which assumes CO2 drives temperature) actually exists in the Earth system, it is so small that it is overwhelmed by the reality that temperature drives CO2.
Proof:
In this enormous CO2 equation, the only signal that is apparent is that dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags global Lower Troposphere temperatures by about 9 months.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
CO2 also lags temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
To suggest that ECS is larger that 1C is not credible. I suggest that if ECS exists at all, it is much smaller than 1C, so small as to be essentially insignificant.
Regards, Allan
________
My January 2008 hypo is gaining notice with the recent work of several researchers. We don’t always agree on the fine details, but there is clear agreement in the primary hypothesis.
Here is Murry Salby’s address to the Sydney Institute in 2011:
Here is Salby’s address in Hamburg 2013:
See also this January 2013 paper from Norwegian researchers:
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature
Global and Planetary Change
Volume 100, January 2013, Pages 51–69
by Ole Humluma, Kjell Stordahlc, Jan-Erik Solheimd
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Highlights
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/gerald-warner-global-warming-s-deranged-disciples-1-3264990
THE SCOTSMAN: GLOBAL WARMING’S DERANGED DISCIPLES
by Gerald Warner
Published on the 12 January 2014
Edinburgh
CLIMATE change is real and it is happening very fast. The climate of opinion, that is, regarding the rapidly imploding fantasies of the global warming alarmists.
After a decade in which sane commentators have been angered and frustrated by the purblind adherence to the warmist superstition by followers of the Al Gore cult – prominent among them our own esteemed First Minister and President for Life Designate – the whole climate change scam has finally degenerated into a joke, provoking widespread derision.
That has not deterred the climate Gnostics, sustained by their mystical insight into inner truths hidden from sceptics (“deniers” in their language of anathema) and, increasingly, from scientists who have not taken the IPCC shilling. The cultists can rely on the support of politicians since non-existent global warming furnishes the pretext for all-too-existent and exorbitant taxes, which is what the whole myth is all about. Thus, during discussion of the recent floods in the Commons last week, David Cameron was prompted by the Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron to attribute the problem to climate change. The Prime Minister dutifully replied: “Colleagues across the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not. I very much suspect that it is.”
That statement was overdue as it was seven weeks since he had been reported as telling his colleagues “We have to get rid of the green crap”, an exceptionally long period for Dave to entertain a consistent opinion. Unfortunately, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, refused to endorse his leader’s view. Then the Meteorological Office intervened to contradict Dave: “At the moment there’s no evidence to suggest that these storms are more intense because of climate change.” That was a significant development because formerly the Met Office could be counted upon to support climate alarmism. Clearly it is now conscious of reputational damage and is hedging its bets.
It is not alone. Very subtly, unobtrusively, other institutions and individuals are backing away from the discredited orthodoxy of warmism. The process began some time ago when the Royal Society declared its switch to a more neutral stance in the climate debate. Scientists not committed to the cause by financial considerations are growing aware that the imposture is disintegrating so fast it could achieve Piltdown status within their own career spans. It is a measure of the bogus nature of the alleged climate crisis that the last time warming occurred there was a majority Tory government in office under John Major (“Oh, yes!”).
Recently the collapse of the scam has accelerated. The Christmas holiday period was enlivened by the hilarious pantomime “Anthropogenic Global Warming On Ice”, when 52 AGW believers led by Professor Chris Turney embarked on the Russian ship Akademik Shokalsky to study the melting of Antarctic ice. In reality, as they would have known before they set out if they had read Nasa reports, Antarctic sea ice is currently at its largest extent since records began: 19.5 million square kilometres. Their ship became embedded in the ice, as did the Chinese icebreaker sent to rescue them. When their situation became potentially life-threatening, these pioneering climate change gurus experienced the humiliation of having to rely on the leading climate sceptic Anthony Watts and his colleagues for accurate Antarctic weather information to facilitate their rescue by helicopter.
Meanwhile, the United States was in the grip of a “polar vortex”, with temperatures in all 50 states below freezing and a low of –43C recorded in one area. The Niagara Falls froze into stalactites of ice. This was hailed by True Believers as conclusive evidence of global warming – after all, everything is. As a Greenpeace activist famously expressed it: “Global warming can mean colder.” A heatwave, a flood, a drought, a blizzard, an away win by Partick Thistle – all will be determinedly conscripted as “evidence” of man-made climate change. These people are beyond help. The climate imposture is doomed to end not with a bang but a belly-laugh.
What is totally unamusing, however, is the harm these fanatics and complicit politicians have done, raping the landscape with their hideous wind turbines and imposing crippling taxes. Fuel poverty is killing the elderly. Every winter more people die of hypothermia in Scotland than in Finland. Although the climate madness will have the most lethal consequences in the developing world, it also threatens to impoverish Europe. A government study has shown the lifetime cost of meeting “renewables” targets across the EU will be £290 billion, more than a quarter of which will be contributed by the UK. Denmark already has the dubious distinction of being the first country where green taxes account for more than 50 per cent of an electricity bill. It is not global warming that is killing us but its deranged disciples.