by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Yes, Virginia, it really has been a cold winter.
The winter months of December 2013 and January 2014 averaged over the contiguous 48 United States were the 3rd coldest Dec/Jan in the last 30 years.
The analysis is based upon ~350 NOAA/NWS stations that measure temperatures every 6 hours (or more frequently), many located at airports. This is different from the official NOAA temperature product (update not yet available), which is based upon daily max/min temperatures measured at 1,000+ co-op stations. Those stations have had large adjustments made due to (among other things) changing time of observation (TOBS) over the years.
Here’s a plot of the Dec/Jan averages for the last 41 years (click for large version):
An interesting feature is that 5 of the last 7 years have been below the 41-year average, which has happened only one other time in the 41-year period.
The data I use are adjusted for average spurious urban heat island (UHI) warming that increases with population density around the thermometer site. That relationship is shown at the end of this article. The analysis starts in only 1973 since that is the first year with a large amount of quality-controlled 6-hourly temperature data archived at NOAA.
So, does the cold winter disprove global warming theory? No more than an unusually warm winter proves the theory. It’s just what we used to call “weather”.
=======================================================
More interesting stories about this winter are at Dr. Roy Spencer’s website: http://www.drroyspencer.com/ be sure to bookmark it.
It will be interesting to see what NOAA/NCDC comes up with for the December-January ranking in their “state of the climate” report due in a few days. My guess is that it won’t be anywhere close, probably something like 9th coolest.
Place your bets.
Global Temperature: the Post-1998 Surprise
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/
5 of the last 7 years have been below the 41-year average
Uh oh. I sure hope that “The Sixth Winter” turns out NOT to be predictive fiction. And yes, that’s a bit tongue in cheek, but still.
We used to call climate something else too. Climate used to be a relatively small time-scale description of the quasi-permanent general and seasonal weather pattern variations plus extremes, teleconnected to regional flora, and specific geographic and topographic parameters, along with latitude, longitude, and altitude location. It was not the “average” of weather. The “average” of weather was just that and nothing more. The media and most climate scientists have since allowed the morphing of a statistical measure (mean and/or anomoly) of weather data into “climate”. Descriptive numerical statistics of weather data do not comprise “climate”.
A bit OT station siting question.
Perhaps there’s no answer to this but, is there a way to determine if forecast that depended on data “down-weather” of poorly sited stations have a history of being more inaccurate than forecast that used data from well sited stations?
Anthony, you are asking the wrong person this question. Steven has a mate, Robert Way, who has already cringed [my spelling] all the arctic warming data into one nice bundle. It is so smoothed that when you use it there has never been one area of anomalous cooling, only warming in the arctic over the last 20 years. All the composed data modification is correct because each bit is supported by the surrounding, always warm cells. even when they are not there.
“Eureka NWT is a good example” Eureka has been in Nunavut since 1999.
“REPLY: And that Arctic warming may not be truly indicative of reality, since virtually every weather station is in an artificial warm pocket of humanity, and it appears the Arctic boundary layers acts differently at high latitudes. – Anthony”
So people that live in the Arctic are just imagining that things have warmed up???
Here’s the problem Mitchell, Mosher, et al have as far as I’m concerned:
Regional warming does NOT PROVE global warming, but regional cooling DISPROVES it.
You can’t have a theory that constantly adds energy into a system and yet still have areas with cooling trends. Some areas may not warm as fast as others, but the trend should only be in one direction; up.
Per says:
February 3, 2014 at 1:13 pm
Global Temperature: the Post-1998 Surprise
Actually, the big surprise that gets under weighted by several orders of magnitude in the discussion is the vegetative health, biosphere, crop yields and world food production that are exploding upwards.
While 2 sides battle over how much temperatures increased and how much they will increase and speculate over how much this has effected and will effect our planet, earth is telling us loud and clear, exactly how.
As the planet gets greener and greener and greener, it seems like a lot of people are not listening/looking.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-finds-plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise-16094
The power of the known law of photosynthesis and the key role that carbon dioxide plays is somehow not counting all that much.
Unmentionable says:
February 3, 2014 at 11:06 am
” … this year it’s easily the coolest Australian summer I’ve experienced in decades in northern eastern Australia … ”
I concur.
Interesting thing happened when sexed-up Cyclone Dylan was approaching. Some hours before landfall I was driving, and found myself turning on the heater because of the cold.
After landfall (200km south of me) it was warmer again. The usual pattern with cyclones is warmer before, cooler after.
I’m also unconvinced by the designations for Edna and Fletcher. I suspect that BoM, having predicted 3 or 4 cyclones to come for Queensland this season, are determined to be “proved” right. Predictions in previous years have been so bad that they seemed to give up last year and predicted a “typical” cyclone season. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
Mike Maguire says:
February 3, 2014 at 2:55 pm
Actually, the big surprise that gets under weighted by several orders of magnitude in the discussion is the vegetative health, biosphere, crop yields and world food production that are exploding upwards
You are quite right about that, there can absolutely be NO mention of anything positive about increased CO2 in the press. People will be “disappeared” over that. These benefits are an immense positive for increased CO2. Needless to say, but all of this extra greening and increased photosynthesis is also a negative CO2 feed back effect on temperatures. A higher fraction of the sunlight that reaches the earth’s surface is converted into C-H bonds rather than ending up as waste heat in the environment.
“REPLY: … Arctic warming may not be truly indicative of reality, since virtually every weather station is in an artificial warm pocket of humanity, and it appears the Arctic boundary layers acts differently at high latitudes.”
So people that live in the Arctic are just imagining that things have warmed up???
Lets keep in mind that US is only a few percentage of the globe
“REPLY: But, what is the resolution of this skin temperature data? I’m guessing 2KM or maybe 5km? Since I’ve proven in my surfacestations study that proximity to human habitation acts over short distances, and since we know the majority of historic weather stations are often within 100 meters of the observer’s domicile, it is most likely that the effect is below the resolution of that data you present, making it essentially invisible. Many if not most, Arctic and Antarctic bases are less than 1KM wide. Eureka NWT is a good example. I think your premise falls flat.- Anthony”
I used to ride a motorcycle in rural Pennsylvania. Open helmet with no face shield (I was young and stupid back then). I was frequently impressed that every little creek was a local cold spot. I’d guess the resolution was 3 meters. I frequently gave thanks when riding in to a small town, as it was noticeably warmer. Of course, there needed to be no wind to notice this.
The last month has seen a big cooling in eastern equatorial subsurface water
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif
suggesting that there may still be life in my prediction of a strong La Nina in the first half of this year.
daddylonglegs says:
February 3, 2014 at 4:38 pm
As well, the ENSO meter just reached -0.7 today. However check the predictions. Not one is in the ball park.
Here in Alaska, we are experiencing an extremely warm winter, and it can’t be strictly attributed to UHI. Alaska has several 300 mile dog sled races, many several decades old, and every race through the wilderness has found this to be a very warm winter. The Yukon Quest is a 1000 mile race that is currently underway is noteworthy for warm temperatures, and I imagine that the Iditarod will find more of the same when it starts the first of next month.
That said, this isn’t “proof” of global climate change or global warming. Those phrases have been intensely studied, and CAGW advocates pick their term based on “unusual” warmth, or the lack of “unusual” warmth. Their studies have found that people in general associate their limited experience with local conditions and are unable to conceive of global scale or the periods of time needed to establish climate. This blind spot is carefully exploited as they manage their message. Skeptics of CAGW lack a cohesive messaging package, and aren’t trying to sell doom (always a great lead story). The CAGW messaging package isn’t set up to deal with years of cool or cooling temperatures however, and it’s been fun watching them thrash about trying to overcome the human predisposition to extrapolate personal experience and local exposure to weather.
The pendulum swings back…
If you want to lose some of the Earth’s heat, export it to the Pole, where the sun never shines.
(Some will make things complex by bringing up the stratification of the polar atmosphere, and the difficulty of heat rising in a stratified situation, and to that I say, “humbug.” If the minus-thirty air stays up at the Pole, the Pole will lose less heat. If that air is replaced by plus-thirty air, the Pole will lose more heat.)
If you want to lose some more of the Earth’s heat, bring the minus-thirty air south to where the sun does shine, and freeze lakes that are usually open, and spread snow where the ground is usually bare. The “albedo” equations I leave to others, but I simply know that a snow-cover reduces temperatures. Even at night the temperatures, due to radiational cooling, are ten degrees colder. And a very noticeable difference (downwards) is seen in temperatures downwind of a lake, when it freezes over, and this is especially true of the Great Lakes on the Canada-USA border. (It is also seen when Hudson Bay freezes over.)
While the poor of Europe are getting a deserved break from energy-poverty, it is because they are in the path of warm air heading to the pole, on its way to leaving planet Earth.
Parts of Siberia that are above normal still are below freezing and have increased snowfall, (above average in extent where it is not above-average in depth.)
North America is getting a taste of what Eurasia got last winter. (And it is far from over.)
The net result, in my mind, of winters when the jet stream is loopy, is a loss of heat, compared to winters when the jet stream is zonal and cold stays up at the Pole.
(Likely this sort of loopy jet stream is the planet’s way of bringing things back into some yet-to-be-determined balance, but I think it is very bad news for those who desire warmth, whether it be for political or personal reasons.)
Martin Clark says:
February 3, 2014 at 3:10 pm
Unmentionable says:
February 3, 2014 at 11:06 am
” … this year it’s easily the coolest Australian summer I’ve experienced in decades in northern eastern Australia … ”
I concur.
Interesting thing happened when sexed-up Cyclone Dylan was approaching. Some hours before landfall I was driving, and found myself turning on the heater because of the cold.
After landfall (200km south of me) it was warmer again
>>>>
We must be situated very close to each other Martin. Re TC Dylan was a bit of a nothing, basically the Tasman Sea High predictably dried it out as it approached, prevented the inland rainfall from arriving via blocking and pushing back northwards the northern humid inflow stream. Only the convergent flow on the SE side arrived.
I said back in mid-January the unseasonal strong Tasman Highs were killing-off the wet season, continually pushing the humidity back up to PNG, so any Lows that tried to formed were dried out and sheared. Today it’s unusually cool and dry, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It feels about like late April to me, rather than the middle of those high humidity summers we’re both familiar with. The more conspicuous point though, is that almost no one is even talking about what’s really happening, the mainstream media and BOM do not want to know about it, and all you get on ABC is endless heatwave propaganda, soon to transition to the global-warming-induced-drought blitzkrieg.
This sort of biased nonsense must change, we deserve far better from publicly-funded organization, who clearly do not have nearly enough competition, which will force them to actually perform, or else go away – permanently.
Their chartered protections must be removed, so competition is given room to emerge, or we’ll never rid ourselves of the established liars and snake-oil sellers in those public institutions. I’m not fan of government, but government created this and government needs to institute the inquiry processes needed to reform or remove it, and thus improve the services and remove the albatross around tax-payers necks, and its warping political influences.
I hope they finally do just that, we require much better than this nonsense and it’s clearly well past due, lever them all off the public tit and make them get a private job, where they actually have to perform for real, or fail and go away, as they should have already. If government expects us to pay tax, for this, the onus is on that government to clean-house. Let’s see how much the coalition really believes in smaller government and a lower tax burden.
@ur momisugly Unmentionable and Martin Clark
Why can`t you australians have for yourself a proper national institute of meteorology of the kind that we have here, the Yr. no and Met.inst.Uio.no like we have it here in Norway with weather forecasts that can be more or less relied on and disputed. They further have cameras standing on steady on local sites that we can judge and make up our own minds and give thanks to the meteorologists for doing that at least, if we don`t believe in what they say. And for telling us of their methods and the problems that they have when they are not so sure.
And we further have Bjerknessentret.UiB.no. They follow the sea serpent and the large snake that goes around the world and bites itself in the tail, making large S- meanders that can be understood. They further follow the apple blossoms and the glaciers and ackers the ground on both sides because it is so steep there. They are quite fameous for being able to think rather vertically also you see., which obviously give better results.
I thought you had proper crocodiles. There you have water dragons as good as any to begin with.
But theese fellows do not fight the IPCC and they do not fight hockeysticks, On the contrary, they rather contribute and deliver to the IPCC and thus get paid for it. They are quite obviously more able to take advantage of their local waters and pools and ices and atmospheres and make it important to the world so they can sell their own and local raw materials in better purified, “lifted” and refined form on the world market and earn from it.
For acheiving that you should not just fight hockeysticks and sell unrefined bullshit on the free market and blame it on the politicians and on the taxes you see.
HenryP says:
February 3, 2014 at 11:57 am
unmentionable says
The drought-stricken inland areas are feeling the pain though,
henry says
try to understand why it is getting drier at the higher latitudes and paradoxically even it a bit warmer there (when there is more sunshine)
during a cooling period
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
>>>>
Yes, thank you for the link. The mechanisms are plainly observable to anyone who wants to see, recognize and understand that both the warming and the cooling in this Australian Summer are intimately related and can only be understood with respect to both sides of the coin. BOM, and the national media are simply trading (disgracefully) on a widespread lack of awareness of this fact, that these were and are both caused by the same region-wide circulation pattern that keeps brings up cooler direr air from the southern ocean.
Plus they’re certainly not wanting to dispel such unawareness, just the contrary, in their actions, melodrama and statements they are clearly seeking to enhance the lack of understanding of what is really causing it, and distracting from those problematic connections and details which destroy the narrative – at every turn.
Bless their cotton socks.
Unmentionable says:
February 3, 2014 at 9:04 pm
Martin Clark says:
February 3, 2014 at 3:10 pm
—
On last thing Martin, on the night of the 29th of January, before Dylan formed, ABC-1 News and weather, which uses the BOM data, reported that Townsville had “a steamy 36 degrees today”.
However, I’ve been routinely monitoring and audio recording the Airport ATIS frequency this summer after I detected these huge errors in temps BOM was reporting, and the highest temp given on ATIS on the 29th of Jan at Townsville airport was 32 degrees C.
That’s a massive 4 degree C divergence, with what BOM claims for Townsville’s max that day and what was recorded on ATIS. And the ATIS conditions are also logged by Air Services Australia who operate ATC (though Townsville’s ATC is performed by the RAAF), so that is available for any accident or incident inquiry.
So that data was recorded and is still available (and I also have time and date-stamped audio recordings of it). That 4 C difference in BOM’s claims was also the highest level of max-temp ‘error’ I’ve detected and logged, so far, this summer. But for the past two months I’ve consistently monitored both BOM’s daily over-stating of the local temps, which have been routinely been 1 to 2 C, and even up to 3 C, above what the ATIS reported, on almost all days this summer.
So where is BOM’s temp sensor in Townsville? It’s also situated at the same airport, and is probably within the same facility as that used by the ATC-ATIS system sensors. (and could it even be from the same thermometer? … if so … guess what that means …)
So anyone in officialdom, reading this, who does not believe this can be actually happening, daily, can simply review the ATIS max temp for the past three months, plus the BOM’s max temp from the same location over the same period. That will clearly confirm what I’ve observed and am saying here. Something stinks to high-heaven in BOM’s daily max temp claims, and this must be investigated.
And after all that, plus the farce surrounding TC Dylan’s track, its forward speed impossibility when plotted, and the intensity ‘forecasting’ nonsense of a cat-2 at landfall, plus now this alleged TC Fletcher utter farce, currently going on within the Gulf of Carpentaria I’ve more than sufficient grounds to regard BOM with contempt and its daily max temp ‘data’ with the deepest of suspicion.
Anyway, my apologies to others for stating all this within a page about the harsh north American conditions this year.
Carbomontanus says:
February 3, 2014 at 10:13 pm
@ur momisugly Unmentionable and Martin Clark …………….
>>>>
Gee, play distract-the-public-from-an-open-discussion much?
Steven Mosher
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/03/u-s-decjan-temperatures-3rd-coldest-in-30-years/#comment-1557777
Henry says
Wow, I am honored to have deserved a reply!
first of all, I don’t trust graphs from before 1950, not much at any rate.
Problem is that thermometers were not re-calibrated before the fifties and there was no automatic temperature recording. I am therefore sceptical about those results.So looking from the sixties onward, we see from your quoted graph that the warming rate in Alaska declined from + 0.34 degrees C per decade in 1960 to only +0.065 C per decade in 1990…
Now if you go back to my graph,
http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ql5zq8.jpg
observe with me that out of ten random Alaskan stations sampled, 9 show a decisive downward trend from 1998. The tenth station (Barrow) seems to have an incorrect result reported for 2000. Be that as it may, if I take an anverage of all ten stations sampled, I get that Alaska is cooling at a rate of -0.55 degrees C per decade since 1998.
SO IT IS +0.34 (1960) +0.066 (1990) AND NOW -0.55 (1998)
Do you see the (correct) global cooling pattern emerging?
In fact to explain these results, I can refer you again to my second graph here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
where I had good reliable data on maxima going back to 1942 from the Elmendorff military station in Alaska (for maxima they would have used the thermometers that got stuck on the top, which would be reasonable reliable)
Your Berkeley report does not report the rate since 2000? Why not? Without that information, you cannot challenge the information I am providing you now.
Unmentionable says:
February 3, 2014 at 10:17 pm
Some interesting points … BoM Townsville is located at 19°14’56.83″S, 146°45’56.73″E according to GoogleEarth. The equipment is on open ground about 70m to the east. Not that far from a runway, but could be worse. Unless they are still using the one in the Stevenson screen in the middle of the car park on the west side 🙂
Not sure what else is there – as it’s a military facility not many people get to look around, but there may be someone I can ask …
The mismatch between BoM and ATIS temperatures reminds me of the mismatch between what is reported from BoM tide gauges in Queensland (all 2 or 3 of them) compared to the other +/- 38 with long term records run by port authorities, Maritime Safety Qld etc, including one in the same tidal reach. The BoM/ATIS mismatch might be something that the people auditing BoM’s temperature series need to know about. Jo Nova would know how to contact them.
My email is troppo19 at gmail.com, or, if that is inappropriate to post, googling building urban design tropics will find me.
@ur momisugly all an everyone exept two Australians plus an unmentionable one
Oh yes, there is a lot of “unions” in Australia also, I forgot that for a tiny while.
But allthough having been sent there on slave ships from their homelands, many of them, they do not necessarily have to “union”, holding hands shoulder by shoulder kissing each other on their mouths- and talk with one voice like fools on a ship ever after that.
mods
“Carbomontanus” seems to be a bot edited with minor human input to give an illusion of sentience. Please block it.
@all and everyone
on Daddylonglegs:
Here you have the monopoly- claim of being human also, that is, to be of the pure “blood” or beingt of the right “chemistery” and “sentinence” as they call it today.
Basic lectures in cleartekst for the study of that madness disease can be found at “the twenty-one conditions” on Wikipedia, ( The LENIN- doctrines) and in Maos little red book.
We know it also for years and decades on longwave radio from “Deutschlandesender” East Berlin.
Who for a series of decades showed us the basic religious beliefs, doctrines, and mental behaviours of dia- lectic materialism and denialism.