No New Continent 'Hottest' Temperature Records Since 1978

“But the Arctic is an Ocean not a Continent.
Have faith.”
Arctic is so small so calling it the Arctic sea is more correct?

So this rests upon the selection of a single statistic – The maximum temperature recorded anywhere on the continent and with no justification as to why that is a valid statistic.

BoM says 2013 was the hottest year in Australia because the average temperature for the whole continent over the whole year was the highest recorded.
The article author notes that a single temperature on a single day at one place in 1960 was the highest recorded.
Which of these two measures best represents weather, and which (if either) is climate?

michael hammer says: @ January 28, 2014 at 2:49 am
Strange, the media down here in Australia have been saying that according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology, for Australia 2013 was the hottest year since records began. Is there something not adding up?
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
What is adding up are all the 'Adjustments' to the temperature record.
Jo Nova has a series of threads on Australian temperature records and the manipulation HERE.

Africa seems to be the place to be if you hate cold!
But a random distribution of record high and low temperatures would support the idea that there should have been one or 2 set in the last 30 years, especially if, as alleged, the atmosphere is becoming unglued.

“Which of these two measures best represents weather, and which (if either) is climate?”
The best measure is the single day peak, because it’s true. BoM claims are fraud. See for example the “hot angry summer” fraud – debunked by JoNova. This blazing heat somehow didn’t show up on the satellite.

If you don’t have “extreme” on your SOTU Bingo card, you have no chance of winning.

R2D2 says: January 28, 2014 at 12:14 am
Wasn’t there a record cold last year in Antarctica?
——————
You may be remembering the new all-time low (-100 F) at South Pole; but Vostok, Antarctica is colder than the South Pole.

Pretty sure that’s now out of date since they just recorded the lowest temperature ever recorded on the planet in Antarctica.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/09/coldest-ever-temperature-recorded-on-earth-found-in-antarctica/

I can’t stomach listening to the O’bummer — can’t even look at him. He’ll sound ridiculous to any reasonable person talking about CAGW during a major freeze, but that won’t stop him.

I’d rather watch “Pawn Stars” than the SOTU speech. Chumlee and the Old Man would have something more intelligent to say than any of those politicians…

beng says: @ January 28, 2014 at 8:09 am
David L. says: @ January 28, 2014 at 8:19 am
>>>>>>>>>>
Oh for a teleprompter glitch at the critical moment…

Steve Case says:
January 28, 2014 at 12:12 am
“The empirical evidence doesn’t support the claims for sea level either.”
Or for ice or snow or for “extreme weather events”.

The same sort of evidence is clearly visible in the state records within the United States — it is less visible in the international records, but those records extend backwards with much less reliability over much of the 20th century.
Just about exactly 1/2 of the state high temperature records in the US were set in a single decade — the 1930s. Outside of the obviously huge bump in the 30’s there is no visible trend at all in state records. Some were set in the 1890’s, some in the 1910’s and 1920’s — pretty much as many as were set in the 1990’s and 2000’s. Which is a paltry number per decade, given that one is divvying up only half the states over the remaining 110 years of data, for an average of at most a couple per decade.
It is interesting to note that Africa also experienced its hottest recorded temperature in the 1930s (although this really says little about records across the continent). Many of these past records were set at stations uncorrupted by UHI; one does really have to wonder how many of the more contemporary records that DO exist are really UHI-driven or the results of “adjustments” of temperature sets. There is substantial reason to think that the 1930’s were globally a close match to the present in the pattern of their temperature, right down to the persistent melting of Arctic sea ice. Sadly, there were few people to observe and record the Arctic of that era in detail and all we have are scattered and anecdotal reports.
These observations actually do call into question the consistency of contemporary estimates of past temperatures. If global warming is indeed consistent and global, it is difficult to understand why the US set most of the high temperature records in the 30’s with more than enough results to be highly statistically significant. It is difficult to escape the probable conclusion that the 1930’s were warmer than the present — and that’s an entire continent right there. The Africa record suggests that it isn’t completely implausible that it was the warmest decade there as well (and that would be two continents right there). The US dust bowl was supposedly correlated with strong ENSO activity IIRC, and ENSO typically produces global effects — see the huge bump in GASTA in all of the temperature records associated with the 1997-1998 Super-ENSO event, where basically all of the warming observed in the satellite era occurred in a single 2-4 year stretch around it.
Alternatively, one can accept the probable truth that the average temperature is indeed now higher, but higher temperatures decrease temperature variability and weather variability, making it less likely to experience extreme heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and so on. It’s hard to justify the observation that the weather now is more extreme (in the absence of any evidence to support it) and hotter, though, because if global temperatures were increased by half a degree or more and more variable, it is very difficult to understand why all the continental records were not set in the last decade and why most of the US state records were set in the 30’s.
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