Record temperatures are absolute – no adjusments needed. One of the biggest complaints about climate science has to do with adjustments of temperature data, such as we’ve recently witnessed from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and have been long discussing here at WUWT about what NOAA does to US and global temperature data via techniques such as homogenization which basically swamp pristine station data with questionable data from stations compromised by UHI and micro-site biases.
But, record temperatures are absolute, and there is no possible way that any adjustments can be made to such records. Otherwise, they become meaningless. So, rather than rely on adjusted temperature data, a good independent indicator of warming or cooling is the number of temperature records that have been set. While NOAA/NCDC doesn’t make it easy to track such things, I have spent a considerable amount of time manually downloading and saving the high/low records from each month of 2014 and compiling the data in a spreadsheet.
The results so far through August of 2014 indicate that on balance, 2014 has been a cool year for the USA as this graph shows:
Summer of 2014 has also been cool, with record lows outpacing record highs at nearly 2-1 (3405/1782):
In more detail, examining each month of 2014 so far, we find large differences between record highs and record lows almost every month except for two, May and August, which were comparatively balanced:
But I find this graph most telling:
The biggest gainer this year has been the category of “Record Low Tmax”, seen at the far right, with 19,593 records set this year. What that means is that generally, temperatures have not been reaching the normally expected daytime highs, and so the Tmax is the lowest it has ever been for that day.
All of these graphs and the data I’ve compiled is available in this Excel Spreadsheet: 2014_US_records_NCDC (.xlsx)
I’ll repeat this report for every month in 2014 and have an end of the year summary in January 2015.
Worldwide, NCDC reports record daily highs and record daily lows are tied:
I don’t expect that tie to last for long, as there are lots of straggler stations yet to been collated by NCDC, we’ll review this again near the end of the month and you’ll see what I mean. Those numbers will change.
Right now year to date global cooling indicators (23780+18071 = 41851) slightly outpace warming indicators (21593+18071=39664). We’ll see if that holds.
All data is available here from NOAA/NCDC: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
Has global cooling begun? I’m beginning to believe it’s entirely possible.
Potter global warming is not like a religion where you can believe, or, you not believe. The DATA tells us all we need to know and the DATA is conclusive and overwhelming. Even the “simpel-folk” who don’t understand science are starting to realize that AGW is happening. Any questions?????
[snip -ad hom insult -mod]
Surely, you jest. 17 years, 10 months of steadily increasing CO2 and NO WARMING. Au contraire, global warming is VERY MUCH like a religion where you believe despite the facts.
In fact, global warming is exactly like a religion. It requires a suspension of disbelief to practice global warming religion. It also requires members to repeat the tired trope that “the data is conclusive and overwhelming” and that the “science is settled”. The fact that so few of the promised global warming “disasters” (Arctic ice gone? No. More “extreme” weather? No. etc) have come to pass can only be ignored by global warming true believers.
Now even the simple folk are catching on the the AGW tax money scam.
Note the step back: AGW. The problem was supposed to be Catastrophic AGW. Sure there’s some anthropogenic warming going on, but even to get much of the current warming in the data, the data had to be massaged and tortured: past temperature readings lowered, rural readings adjusted to reflect the warming in badly sited urban stations, temperature readings conjured out of thin air for zombie stations…
Global warming is not a religion, it either happens or it don’t.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a religion. It requires faith that no matter how many predictions are wrong (pretty much all of them) – it is still going to happen. Just wait and see. Only 5 more years.
The DATA tell us what happened in the past. The DATA are clueless as to what happens tomorrow. Now, generally, true scientist can analyze the data, make theories, and make predictions. After a decade + of no warming, after predictions of polar ice loss and observing ice gain, most scientists and simple-people both know something is wrong with your theory. Then only the most devout, with their sad devotion to their failed religion, such as Mr Frascone will continue to berate and browbeat the non-believers. The problem with the AGW religion is that even the simple-people can see with their eyes. What they see is a pack of lies. What they see are AGW ‘advocates’ demanding CO2 reduction while the same advocates jet 1st class or charter all over the world, spreading their faith. What they see are 17 explanations at my last count, of why this ‘hiatus’ of warming exists. What they see are record cold winters, cool summers and then NOAA claiming the ‘hottest’ year on record. Only the most devout can accept the outrageous claims of their AGW faith and ‘believe’ their eyes are lying. Pity them, even when like Mr Frascone the only way they can sustain their beliefs are to troll web-sites calling discenters ‘simple’
@richard Frascone
The science of CO2 causing *some* warming is in fact “settled”. What is not settled at all, is how much warming. The amount could range anywhere from mildly beneficial overall to catastrophic. As they say, the devil is in the details. You might want to read Dr. Roy Spencer’s thoughts on that for one skeptical viewpoint from a highly qualified scientist.
I advocate a common sense approach to the problem, if there is in fact a problem. I’m all for replacing every bit of coal electric generation worldwide with nuclear. That’s a reasonable compromise, and if nuclear was used on that scale it would be the cheapest form of electricity bar none.Regulatory reform would be necessary. Coal is a dirty and undesirable source of power regardless of CO2 production. So that’s my litmus test for the commitment of those panicked over CO2 – if you won’t accept a major nuclear buildout it must not be much of a crisis.
Another major issue is that the US has already reached peak CO2 output, and developing nations are quickly ramping up fossil electric production. Convincing them to lose their fossil power investment won’t be easy.
Personally, given the current data, I don’t think warming will be anywhere near the highest projections. So, if I were king (lol), I would mandate more money going into climate monitoring so we have accurate data, and an aggressive R&D program into making clean forms of energy cheaper, with a major emphasis on nuclear (U/Pu, Th, and fusion) and solar. My personal view is that large scale wind energy is a terrible idea on many fronts – and the “low cost” touted by advocates is a mirage. Cheap energy is simply a win irrespective of CO2.
The problem a lot of folk have with the current rhetoric on AGW is that the problem is conflated with a very specific set of “solutions”, which amount to a worse, lower opportunity world going forward – especially for developing countries.
Ignore this clown, Frascone. He is a self-deluding, self-appointed “expert” in AGW/CC/CD . . . problem is, all he does is attack other people, insult their intelligence, and repeat whatever boiler-plate gibberish he has most recently been fed.
He posts all the time on the AGW/CC/CD articles over at Yahoo and I have yet to have seen a single, thoughtful, factual, or even rational post.
Hey, Richie, you’ve actually stumbled across the truth, the data DO tell us all we need to know. The data ARE conclusive and overwhelming–just not in the direction you think. Sadly for you, the data DON’T support AGW/CC/CD. Every time new data is obtained, the faux scientists promoting AGW/CC/CD FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT are forced to “massage” and “normalize” it in order for it to agree with their claims. In research, we call that “penciling in” the data.
Oh yeah, I see that your “brilliance” doesn’t extend into grammar . . . the word “data” is plural, not singular.
Then why do you treat it as a religious belief?
Any questions????? Yes, I have one… this article says AGW is NOT happening, but that AGC is happening. So why do you not pay any attention to the facts shown here and still insist that AGW is happening?
REPLY: This article says nothing of the sort. It talks about USA temperature records for 9 months/year to date, making a for a cool year so far. You are reading way too much into it. Madam, you are confused – Anthony
the better question is why the smart people with their super computers didn’t see the polar caps come back in less than two years which leads to better question what are their models missing when they promised a warmer climate and it got a lot colder fast a thought magnetic variance in our magnetic field which determines how much energy from the sun heats or flows around and away from us with the oceans storing our heat or releasing the built up heat slowly working like a cushion against those variances another thought strong sun weak field no ice on planet strong field weak sun welcome to the next ice age!
In case man-released CO2 really is keeping the next glacial advance at bay, I’m doing my bit my opening as much beer and champagne as I can while still staying vertical. Plus chunks of dry ice in my swimming pool.
Forgive me! The Scene is convoluted, the context absurd, and the Science poorly defined!
,,and a pitiful bug like You questions the Obvious?
WTF????
“One of the biggest complaints about climate science has to do with adjustments of temperature data”
YOU DICKS — Show the Data!!!!
“May God Help Us All”, the clowns are screwing with their own data.
“Girls don’t LIKE IT”!!!
Note to Master Watts — unless Replies are “IN” context, Your thread is crap!!!
REPLY: Gosh, what strong juvenile emotions reacting to reporting some numbers from NOAA, all of which are true. – Anthony
Best pat on the back so far 🙂
….Love the WattsUpWith That!!!
Best Regrards Master Watts,
…strong juvenile emotions are the source of the insight which brings Science to its feet and sees it falling on its face in “Comment”.
Respectfully Yours!!!
…john
Dear John!!!
Saw this and thought of your spirited, albeit inane, diatribe: http://www.dailybleh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/stop-talking-300×297.jpg
Best “regrards”!!!
I hope not. I was looking forward to global warming.
I think for such statistics to have any meaning, one must eliminate a lot of stations which haven’t a long history and stations that have moved and stations whose surroundings have changed.
The “experts” just “adjust” for those factors. Just trust them. LOL
Steinar,
I think you missed the point of the article. Anthony’s entire argument is that the complicated and obscure “adjustments” to the observed record have now produced the MAJORITY of all of the recorded warming over the past 150 years. Are all those adjustments actually correct, or have AGW believers allowed their biases to creep into this now intensely politicized subject?
I think Anthony would certainly concur that the use of record temps as a proxy for a perfect temperature history is less than ideal, but it can serve as an interesting check on the “official” measures. If some stations have a short history or poor siting problems or an inhomogeneous distribution, that is still no reason to suppose that they would be biased for or against the production of cool versus warm records.
exactly my sentiments. if you are trying to show people the truth, with transparency you do not blur facts in an opposing direction. 1 record low day and 10 new stations creates quite a confusion when portrayed this way. I like the concept, but if you are going to go through so much work for the sake of sincere honesty, be sincerely honest. don’t adjust numbers, just don’t include numbers from stations that have no viable reason to count.
I might be reading that last grid of data incorrectly (Global Daily Records Summary), but is the High Max the opposite of the Low Min or should it be compared to the Low Max instead? The English language can be tricky on phrases such as this. For “Low Max” does the modifying word “Max” refer to the temperature or to the number of results returned?
Isn’t a “High Min” (21593) a cooling indicator? If the high temperature for a day was the lowest ever that indicates cooling right? Likewise a “Low Max” (23780) means the low temperature for a day was the highest ever, and is a warming indicator, isn’t that right? You have that reverse in your summations.
The way I understand it is. The HIGHs are both warming indicators. High max, means the record high for the day was broken. High min means the LOW for that day was the HIGHEST it has ever been. Whereas the LOWS are both cooling indicators. Low max means the record high was the lowest it has every been and Low min means the record low was broken.
The last sentence should be: “Low max means the high was the lowest it has ever been and Low Min means the record low was broken.
This thing needs a way to edit, or I should proofread better.
OK thanks, I had it reversed then. Considering the global average temperature for this year might break a record (if you believe the NOAA data), it seems really strange there could be more cooling indicators than warming indicators. When the temperature is hovering high its a long way down to break a record low, not like a very cool year when a dip in temperature wouldn’t have to deviate as much to reach a record low. That suggests the raw temperature measurements aren’t hovering nearly as high as the adjusted NOAA data says it is. And I used to think the NOAA temperature reports were “real data”. Not anymore. Its getting really hard to find good temperature data these days.
Reading these comments gives to “Tired Head.”
There is no way that satellite data will come in first or even second. For UAH version 5.6 for example, the anomaly would have to jump from 0.199 to 0.768 and stay there for the next four months to break a record. The highest ever anomaly on version 5.6 was set in April of 1998 when it reached 0.663.
A min means that the temperature didn’t go below a certain temperature, and a high min means that it’s the highest temperature recorded below which the temperature didn’t drop. And vice versa for low max.
“But, record temperatures are absolute, and there is no possible way that any adjustments can be made to such records. ”
I’m confused by this statement, b/c agencies can most certainly make adjustments by discarding record temps, or changing them. You would expect them to have an excuse to do so, and I’m sure they can readily come up with one (i.e. “site thermometer was determined to be miscalibrated”, “previous record temp was recorded wrong”, “thermometer was determined to be sited wrong, giving systematically hi/lo readings”)
These are questionable in their validity, and throwing out records is an even more questionable approach…but it could be done (and perhaps has been).
I am predicting global cooling. This news for the U.S.A is good but it needs to apply to the globe going forward.
I disagree. Cooling is bad. Natural climate cooling is a path to LIA-like reinforcing feedbacks.
And even if you believe in the CAGW-CO2 hypothesis, cooling means more hydrocarbon burning to stay warm and less photosynthesis trapping of CO2. So when the natural cycle turns back positive, that combined an assumed anthropogenic component (If there is one), makes for late 1990’s like warming again.
Move to Houston, you wouldn’t say that . . . (joke).
“But, record temperatures are absolute, and there is no possible way that any adjustments can be made to such records. Otherwise, they become meaningless. ”
huh.
If tommorrow a record cold was recorded at station X.. say -3F, and we investigated and found that
the instrument had been moved to a higher altitude, we could rationally and justifiably do the following..
1. Adjust the temperature and nullify the record
2. Drop the temperature and record altogether.
3. leave the record in place and signal that the conditions had changed.
So, is it possible to adjust records. of course its possible.
Do they become meaningless, of course not.
folks tend to overuse/misuse the terms ‘no possible way” and “meaningless”
61*
REPLY: Oh piffpah, you tend to misuse your sense of being a know it all.
In in the history of temperature records find ONE that has been adjusted and then accepted as valid after adjustment. They just declare them as invalid. -Anthony
If tomorrow the instrument had been moved to a higher altitude, what we could do, rationally, is:
1. Note that no reading is now available at the original location while commencing a new set of temperature data for the new location.
That’s it. A temperature recorded in a different location is simply not recording the original location’s temperature.
Why is that so hard?
If I understand this correctly (maybe I don’t), Anthony is saying that the record highs/lows for 2014 are the subject and not whether or not the old temps have or have not been changed (or “adjusted” if you prefer).
I have the record temps as listed by the NWS from different years for my little spot on the globe that have clearly been changed. I see no indication in any of those list why the numbers were changed. They just were.
PS I’m willing to email the spreadsheet to Anthony but I don’t know how to send him an attachment.
PPS The Weather Channel used to include, at times, the record temps for the day on their “Weather on the 8’s”. I haven’t noticed them doing that since last November. I wonder why?
So, did Honolulu ever fix up this ASOS failure? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/17/noaa-fubar-high-tempclimate-records-from-faulty-sensor-to-remain-in-place-at-honolulu/
Anthony is only compiling 2014 readings. How many stations have been moved within 8 months Mosher? In any event I am being gradually persuaded that with large areas such as USA there is no need to do adjustments, because in the overall scheme of things the changes will even themselves out in the same way as tossing a coin 1000 times will near enough provide a 500/500 split and should be closer to reality that the “adjustments” carried out by Mosher and his ilk. We would certainly not see the remarkable reduction in pre 1960 temperatures.
Then there’s this saga that I don’t think I ever sorted out. Perhaps you can come up with a one line summary, with or without snark. 🙂 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/19/more-on-noaas-fubar-honolulu-record-highs-asos-debacle-plus-finding-a-long-lost-giss-station/
Number 3 is the correct approach. That is the correct factual situation, and.it gives a new base for later years for recodss at the new location.
It might mean that the record cold is of little significance, but so be it.
I still disagree.
“A temperature recorded in a different location is simply not recording the original location’s temperature.”
“in the history of temperature records find ONE that has been adjusted and then accepted as valid after adjustment. They just declare them as invalid.”
Isn’t that what they did in Australia in that recent post? I must not be understanding what you are saying.
If you are saying it makes no sense to adjust good temperature records, I have to agree with you on that.
“If tommorrow a record cold was recorded at station X.. say -3F, and we investigated and found that
the instrument had been moved to a higher altitude, we could rationally and justifiably do the following..
1. Adjust the temperature and nullify the record
2. Drop the temperature and record altogether.
3. leave the record in place and signal that the conditions had changed.”
All wrong and sounds pretty stupid too in this case. If the station has moved, then the correct solution is:
4. Treat it as a new station.
1-3 are wrong for pretty obvious reasons. If you’ve changed the altitude, you’ve probably also changed the exposure and the ground conditions. The new station might be more exposed to southerly winds compared with the old station, and so on. This is because what you want to do is measure what the atmosphere is doing. If you adjust the temperatures you are introducing a “model” of what you think the atmosphere is doing. You’re assuming that the temperature winter/summer/spring/autumn, when La Nina’s and El Nino’s are in play, etc., etc., etc., are all constant and unchanging at all site locations over time. I’m interested in determining what the atmosphere is doing, not Mosher’s theory of what he thinks the atmosphere is doing. (Because he is so clever.)
I lived in Houston for 35 years, three years ago when I retired I moved back to Oklahoma where I’m originally from. According to an OKC weatherman last winter was the coldest winter in Oklahoma in 30 years. My wife said if we get another winter like that we are going back to Texas. We could be the climate refugees the IPCC predicted.
Get ready to sell your retirement home.
Also: Looks like the Arctic Sea Ice extant minimum has leveled off:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_ext
Sorry, bad URL:
This should work.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Yeah, a lot of this is very difficult to mentally reconcile. We are told that August is the hottest August on record, ever, at the same time we just saw that UAH LTT, the more conservative of the two satellite records, dropped 0.1 C in August from its nowhere-near-all-time-high position, and we see that it is at least possible that Arctic Sea Ice has already reached its low point (given temperatures solidly down to the freezing point of sea water even at much lower latitudes than the pole) 2 to 3 weeks early, at the same time low temperature records outpace high temperature records (where both of these are localized and sample many places; roughly half of all the more coarse grained state high temperature records were set in the 1930’s, with no obvious increase in the number of exceptions as a function of time). Trees in NC are already starting to show a hint of fall color although — finally — the last week we have actually had seasonally normal temperatures, that is to say, it has been hot outside.
All that it does is make one very cynical about the adjusted thermometric record, and more inclined to rely on the truly global, much more difficult to “adjust” LTT record. Although if proper error bars were ever included in climate graphs plotted on an absolute temperature scale, it wouldn’t be so important as we could see how dubious claims of global warming, cooling, or anything in between are when plotted on a scale where the entire variation is invisible against the thickness of a graph pen line, inside an error bar that substantially reduces our certainly concerning how much the temperature might have varied, either way, over the last 165 years.
Even high and low temperature records are hardly free from a variety of forms of bias, notably UHI. UHI and land use changes over the last 165 years make high temperature records a priori more likely than low temperature records of any sort at almost all observing stations, as the population of the US has increased by perhaps tenfold in the meantime, the automobile was invented, and a nontrivial fraction of the countryside surrounding any sort of place that people live in quantity is now roadway, parking lot, or large building. Whole forests have been cut down and replaced with farmland. Rivers have been turned into lakes, aquifers have been drained nearly dry. Anybody who thinks that the US (or world!) climate record is somehow pristine, unaffected by human habitation and land use needs to visit here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79765&src=ve or here: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=55167 (for Europe only). If you had made these pictures in (say) 1850, you would have been hard-pressed to see anything but black.
Personally, I think that these maps could be used to directly improve the temperature record. Simply determine the brightest nighttime pixels, scale them to (a rough assumption) of 2 C regional/local UHI effect relative to the “true” global warming that might be attributed to CO_2, and generate a subtraction field for the entire planet based on how “bright” a suitably smoothed kriging of the light field is. Subtract this field from the station estimates according to their geography. Recompute your averages.
There are other ways to proceed, of course. But this isn’t a terrible one, and indeed one could use more than one method and work to reconcile them.
So even the current disparity between high and low records very likely does not correctly reflect average global temperature, as those records are almost by their nature high biased to begin with. Subtracting a UHI correction based on population density or “urbanization” according to some measure such as night light as measured from space or published roadway density would almost certainly take your 2:1 ratio and make it 3 or 4 to 1.
rgb
Your lighting map must include which type of lighting is used by each city since their signature from space could be misleading….especially hooded lights that direct their light downward ( where it is needed). Also sodium vapor and mercury vapor lights look much different from the air. Not insurmountable, but certainly much more work. Perhaps you could get a grant?
Doesn’t GISS already use some form of night lights to guide their temperature “adjustments”?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/18/cedarville-sausage/
Kind of hard to see catastrophic warming here…
http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/image266.png
Thanks for leaving an intelligent, rational, and backed up with factual sources (but not entirely easily understandable) comment on this blip in climate change blogs. As opposed to many of the emotional, offensive, and downright dumb responders, yours was an island in a sea of climatic turmoil, irregardless of ocean temperatures that day.
Keep on with thoughtful remarks, whilst I keep on educating myself as to the Truth lingering just out of our reach. I will pray for wisdom & understanding.
If the probability of a record low was the same as for a record high, these type of comparisons might actually mean something.
Since the chances of a record high are increased by UHI and modern land use changes, the fact that record lows outnumber record highs is even more significant.
It doesn’t matter. I always use this argument in discussions involving record highs outnumbering record lows. If it is valid in that case, it is valid in this one. It is the pushers of the CAGW agenda how feel that they can pick and choose “truths”.
This is CET August 2014
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Aug2014.gif
There is a perfectly rational explanation for both the sudden fall and equally sudden recovery.
If global cooling has indeed begun, Anthony, you’ll have to start a new blog entitled “Watts Down with That”.
Nice one! It reminds me of The Onion article “National Funk Congress Deadlocked On Get Up/Get Down Issue”. Getuplican Party versus Downocrats
In another lifetime, since it will be decades before global cooling is cleanly resolved. A major question is whether or not global warming is clearly resolved relative to natural variations and noise. If you include error bars, this is by no means obvious. Suppose it cooled by 0.2 to 0.3 C, back to the general temperature range of the 1940’s through 1970’s. Would that be global cooling or just a regression to “normal” from a purely natural excursion? How long does a trend have to last to count as “global warming” or “global cooling”? Since there isn’t any good definition of either one and since we have only 35 years or so of really reliable data, it will be decades before we can even think of resolving the question. The entire discussion (on another thread) about paleoclimatology and the truly long term record shows how truly complex the issue can be. We are nowhere near the peak temperature naturally registered in the last interglacial, which was warmer and lasted for a rather long time much warmer than the present. If we lived 100,000 years from now, and were looking back at the ice core record for the last 500,000 years, would we — from looking at the data, mind you — have any reason whatsoever to conclude that any sort of forced, unnatural warming was occurring? Not even if it does go up 1-2 C more, and stays there for a thousand years, would this be “abnormal” compared to the geological climatological record. We would be hard-pressed to attribute the warming to any particular cause, since we cannot tell now why the Eemian was warmer than the Holocene — so far — and there is literally no way in hell for us to tell whether or not the Holocene was or is conspiring to become more like the Eemian completely naturally, without any sort of help from CO_2, any more than we understand why the Little Ice Age happened a mere 350 years ago or thereabouts.
I know your comment was intended as a joke, but there is some pretty serious stuff underlying it. Even if it gets cooler, will we be able to tell (given the many thumbs on the climate scales)? If it cools, is that “global cooling” or just a cooling fluctuation in some other trend? How long does the fluctuation have to last before we consider it a trend? How do we attribute a cause to a trend (once identified) in a highly multivariate nonlinear chaotic strongly coupled system that we cannot integrate at a scale resolution within 10 orders of magnitude of the actual scale of the governing fluctuations, and whose physics we understand, at best, rather dubiously?
rgb
rgb: Of course this is the obverse of the idea that if there is truly a warming trend in play over the last 60 yrs, and the main reason behind it is held to be CO2, then surely at some point, it should be odd to have record cold temperatures popping up too frequently, arctic ice to be able to rebound so sharply and Antarctic ice stubbornly increasing over the satellite record.
The global warming experts believed this to be the case themselves before it started happening (Dr. Viner’s “Children won’t know what snow is”, etc.). Similar to your question: how long can this keep happening, especially when there is a warm artifact built into the official temperature record. Should we expect cold temperature records to outnumber warm temperature records in 2030? 2050? 2100? I think Dr. Viner and others in the climatology creme de creme who expected arctic ice to be gone by 2012, rising seas to have created a billion refugees, etc., in their heart of hearts have to believe the theory has been falsified.
I enjoyed this comment ^^ After spending two days discussing my concern that the science cannot be “settled” with some climate-educated AGWers. I was clearly out of my league because I am trained in medicine, not climate. I was stung by their intolerance for skepticism and left the conversation when they started calling me an F’ing hypocrite for not just trusting, because we are screwed if they are right, etc.
It generated some curiosities for me though–maybe my questions are over simplified and have easy answers, but is there anyone here who can answer these intelligently in lay terms?
Assuming for the sake of argument that the NOAA proxy data paints a real picture, is there any reason not to trust the long term global temperature pattern that gradually cools into an ice age, and then rapidly warms by as much as 13 degrees? The NOAA graph suggests that it is a reliable pattern. It seems relevant (unless I don’t understand the graph) that nature should be wanting to push us into the next ice age at this point. Is her forcing mechanism too weak or too slow to offset human input? How do AGWers justify their claim that human input is so overwhelming compared to nature? My lay mind tells me this is like claiming the snail is strong enough to push the elephant–however I know in medicine, surface logic can lead to bad conclusions.
Help a layman who dared take on the “experts?” It is relevant to me because of the political ramifications.
Welcome Drudge readers:
http://i58.tinypic.com/1j3qye.jpg
These record lows are caused by climate change.
Yes, the record lows are caused by all the excess heat.
Yet it will be the hottest year on record. After adjustments.
OVER 7000 RECORD HIGHS
IN THE USA ALONE FOR 2014
The number of record hot days has climate scientists worried.
“We’ve been warning about this for years” says Tim Flannery, “and our greatest fears are coming true: global warming is here, and it’s unstoppable”.
(Story continues p. 3, right next to stunning pics our newest Page 3 girl, Jennifer Lawrence)
Nevertheless, 2014 will be recorded in the top 5 warmest in the USA evah
Record temperatures are absolute – no adjusments needed….
Anthony, I vaguely remember something about the hottest record in death valley…..wasn’t it adjusted up, and then adjusted down…..or retracted….or maybe the opposite….I forget
REPLY: No, there was an issue with multiple paper forms: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/17/will-the-real-the-death-valley-1934-high-temperature-record-please-stand-up-nws-says-one-on-file-at-ncdc-is-a-fake/
-Anthony
thanks….I had forgotten!
Canada has CBC, think BBC and Australia’s ABC. On CBC there is a science program called Qwirks and Qwarks put together by a fellow named Bob McDonald. Normally it is a very good program on science related topics until climate change is mentioned then Bob’s belief in the scientific method blows right out the window.
Today he said if it wasn’t for AGW we would be entering an ice age. So folks there you have it the low average could be a lot worse.
Prious owners you are threatening us with an ice age. There is a saving grace though, as long as Gore and greenie celebrities keep up their lifestyle that should balance out the prious owners.
Bob McDonald should also inform his viewers that without the elevated CO2 levels (from pre-industrial) there would be an extra 1 billion starving people today.
Note many more record low maxes than record low mins for cool temperature records.
Also note many more record high mins than record high maxes for warm records.
Why is this significant?
It suggests a pattern of warmer nights/mins and cooler days/maxes relative to record setting.
What would cause this? Increased water vapor is a possibility. Increased low clouds also, which would be a negative feedback to global warming(from increased water vapor) as they block more powerful SW radiation during the day than trapping of less powerful LW at night.
Also, the tremendous increase in vegetative health from increasing CO2 has increased evapotranspiration during the growing season more than models have in them. This has increased water vapor in the lower levels even more and appears to be increasing low clouds/reducing daytime heating.
The particular weather pattern since last November has been persistent for much of that time.
Strong ridging out West(where many of the warm records were set) and downstream, a deep anamolous trough/even a cut off low has prevailed.
The upper low/trough has been favorable for more clouds in the Eastern 2/3rd of the country as well as abundant rain/precip, which in turn, causes moist soils and becomes part of the evapotranspiration factor mentioned above( during the growing season).
This particular weather pattern has frequently featured upper level lows dropping down from higher latitudes into the US and at times just an upper level trough in eastern Canada feeding down cooler air into the US on its backside.
The extreme Winter version of the pattern was the Polar Vortex doing what was described above………numerous times.
What is causing it?
Possibly a shift in a natural cycle with a periodicity of around 30 years, similar to how the PDO and AMO have cycles and possibly related.
Last Winter, I used 1976/77 as an analog year for our weather(when we were last in this phase).
A huge ridge dominated out West much of the time, California had a severe drought.
A deep trough/Polar Vortex dropped very far south numerous times downstream, effecting the eastern 2/3rds of the US.
During the 1950’s-70’s this natural cycle had a global cooling influence and many other extreme weather effects.
From the late 1970’s through the 80’s/90’s, the natural cycle was in the warm phase. This increased global warming, especially at higher latitudes(which decreased extreme weather) and enhanced the modest beneficial warming from increasing CO2.
It looks likely that in the last decade, the natural cycle has flipped again. The Winters of 2009/10 and 2013/14 were the coldest since………………….the 1970’s(for the Eastern 2/3rds of the US).
The weather patterns have been similar. There are signs of high latitude cooling. The AO and NAO that were strongly positive in the 1990’s have been strongly negative for lengthy periods during many recent Winters.
That last item involving the AO/NAO will be the most important factor in upcoming Winters.
Brrrr. It’s chilly in my cave.
Throw another hockey stick on fire.
We all know it’s been a cool year over much of the U.S., while it has been warmer than average in many other parts of the world. A more interesting question is, are we seeing more record extremes than would be expected? For example, if the record length is 100 years, one would expect approximately a 1% chance of a record high on a given date, along with a 1% chance of a record low.
Isn’t it true that you still need to adjust for Urban Heat Island in the record max and min temperatures?
If you want to discern the climate signal you would have to.
Stephen Hume, a columnist for the Vancouver Sun who writes about how wonderful socialism is and how awful global warming is once wrote that there will be 4 hot records for every 1 cold record. He also said there were 18 to 23 inquiries that exonerated Michael E. Mann. So there you go.
[snip – confused rant – this is a story about record highs and lows in the USA for 2014 and is perfectly valid for discussion -mod]
Climate Change? LOL
Climate and weather are synonyms for you democrats who are too lazy to google CLIMATE DEFINITION……How smart are democrats if they have just now figured out that THE WEATHER CHANGES! DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Rex,
And how exactly does your comment add to the conversation, calling half of your fellow citizens dumb and lazy?
This is a great article about a serious subject. It contains much fascinating information.
The climate changes daily, the earth warms, the earth cools, alot of it is based on the sun’s solar spot activity and this has been at a low for a few years now.
Global warming does not exist it is just a way for people to get rich. The sea levels may rise slightly but nothing to the effect of what Al Gore was talking about. He actually said 7 years ago that all the sea ice would be gone by now….
All the heat that is missing, is trapped in the Artic ice making it expand.
i’ve searched for this on wuwt but can’t find the co-author or recent thread re polar vortex, so am wondering if it has been overlooked. anyway, it is so crazy, i feel the need to post it:
2 Sept: Toronto Star: AP: Seth Borenstein: New study finds global warming, melting sea ice, connected to polar vortex
As the world gets warmer, parts of North America, Europe and Asia could see more frequent and stronger visits of cold air, a new study says
When there’s less ice, more energy gets into the atmosphere and weakens the jet stream, the high-altitude river of air that usually keeps Arctic air from wandering south, said study co-author Jin-Ho Yoon of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. So the cold air escapes instead…
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is skeptical about such connections and said he doesn’t agree with Yoon’s study. His research points more to the Pacific than the Arctic for changes in the jet stream and polar vortex behaviour, and he said Yoon’s study puts too much stock in an unusual 2012.
But the study was praised by several other scientists who said it does more than show that sea ice melt affects worldwide weather, but demonstrates how it happens, with a specific mechanism…
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/09/02/new_study_finds_global_warming_melting_sea_ice_connected_to_polar_vortex.html
More energy weakens the guardian Jet Stream, which then collapses toward the equator, thus allowing cold air to escape from its northern imprisonment. Well, that certainly sounds…creative.
Obviously, Mr. Yoon is funded by taxpayers. Find out who those “several other scientists” praising this study are and where their funding comes from. The corruption of science by government needs more documented exposure.
I note that Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, claims with astonishing hubris that arctic sea ice levels are up “only temporarily” this year. Meanwhile, Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is skeptical.
Can there really be a scientific consensus that the future is dire when there is no consensus on the reasons why?
The research is too fragmented for observers like me. I’d like to see all the climate oracles under one roof at Delphi, where they’d have a single website with a full-time video feed. Dire prognostications could be made in real time and archived in one place for later checks of accuracy.
Ha,ha. (That’s a ha ha for a single dire prediction) We gods never agree. And if we did divulge our direst predictions, we’d have to kill you.
There appear to be some record low highs missing from Arizona’s August data.
I compared August records for Arizona at NOAA/NCDC with NWS preliminary records for Northern Arizona.
During August, the Northern Arizona NWS reported 12 record low highs, three ties for record low high, and one tie for record high. Six of those record low highs and one tied low high are missing from the NOAA/NCDC listing, even though the temperatures appear to be valid. Whoever is confirming the records seems to have a problem with stations where temperatures are checked in the mornings and the maximum is actually from the day before.
The problem is more than just confusion with time of observation, though. Two stations–Cottonwood-Tuzigoot and Jerome–actually have their record temperatures deleted from the records available from NCDC’s Historical Observing Metadata Repository. I investigated these.
The Coop station at Tuzigoot Nat’l Monument logs temperature and precipitation data at 8am and 4pm. They logged a high temperature of 73° F on August 19 at 4pm. The temperature subsequently rose briefly, and the nighttime high recorded the next morning was 76°. The NWS took the 76° temperature to be the actual maximum and listed that as a record, which makes sense. There is absolutely no doubt the previous record of 82° set in 1983 was superseded.
The recorded maximum on August 19 at Jerome was 67°. The previous record low high was 72°, set in 1979.
There is no logical reason why the recorded temperatures were erased from the record at HOMR.
Could such data fiddling explain why August is “comparatively balanced?”
Record lows outpaced record highs 2-1. That is the surest sign of global warming. Nothing says warming like cooling.
But Al Gore promised that the ice caps would melt and coastlines would start flooding. It should already be happening. He promised.
Even if the globe manages a warming trend in the future, the cooling trend that has taken place recently proves beyond doubt that man’s contribution to global warming is insignificant. With all the pollutants, CO2, and methane man, cow, and termite alike have been injecting into the atmosphere, you’d think we’d have had at least a minor warming effect on the planet in the last 20 years or so. Even the methane leaking from the ocean has failed to contribute to warming.
Please send me some of that!
This is all about the frequencies of cold versus warm records with the cold records outnumbering the warm records. That wouldn’t negate the possibility of a record warm year, because the magnitude of these records are not taken into account. What if the majority of the warm records are substantially warmer than the previous records whilst the cold records are only minimally colder than the previous ones?
It isn’t, is it? Reality disproved all the speculation and rationalizations.
[snip . . OT . . mod]
[snip . . OT . . mod]
Wait until next spring! The upcoming winter will be one of the coldest on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Any honest climatologist worthy of a college degree can see that, given the cold summer and all the ice that has accumulated at the North Pole of late. It accumulated at record pace, incidentally. Explain how man is responsible for that unexpected phenomenon, global warming theorists. Rationalizing it won’t get you anywhere.
Those of us with an education in chemistry and atmospheric history realize how powerful an influence cyanobacteria alone have had and can have on the earth’s atmosphere. These bacteria predated plant live. What they ALONE accomplished was to dramatically transform the earth’s early atmosphere from a poisonous mixture dominated by ammonia and methane into the atmosphere we are now enjoying. Cyanobacteria paved the way for plant life and all complex life on this planet.
Knowing what this amazing organism did to the earth’s early atmosphere so long ago gives you a solid idea of its capabilities. If half of all land-based plant life disappeared, cyanobacteria would pick up the slack and still easily manage to balance the earth’s atmosphere. The cleaning job it did a cappella millions of years ago proves how capable it really is. Man is no competition for cyanobacteria. Will somebody please inform money-grubbing Al Gore and Bill Nye, the pseudo-science guy?
Anthony,
Do you have data that shows how many degrees differential the new record is from the old record? For example, if the average record low was only 1 degree below the previous or 10 degrees below versus the amount above for the new high record.The sum of the total would indicate the scale of heat energy change in the environs. i don’t think it would be valuable for any particular model, but the information could be used in seeing what shift might be needed to ASHRAE charts for cooling degree days or heating degree days.
Guess that 18071 tie was too good to last…. now global highs are just barely up 18155 to 18102…
Still, not bad for what NOAA says is the third hottest year ever….
Speaking of cooling temps, my thermometer read 43 F this morning inside my trailer. I put it outside and read 35 F. That is a drop of 12 F from the day before.
Comparing daily highs and lows are like comparing veggies and meat. Compare high and low daily highs, high and low daily lows.
The earth goes through long term and short term periods of warming and cooling. If we are warming the world, she will no doubt kick in methods to neutralize that, which unfortunately makes most of Europe and Canada unbearably and arctically cold.
It is little wonder that cold records are exceeding warm records for the past year when the background trend for the last 16 years is one of cooling for United States.
The following are monthly temperature anomaly trends per decade for Contiguous US or 48 states as calculated by the NCDC/NOAA Climate at a Glance web page for the last 16 years [1998-2014]. The figure reflect the linear trend in Fahrenheit degrees per decade per NCDC/NOAA web page data using base period of 1998-2013
WINTER (-1.79 F/DECADE) – DECLINING
DEC -1.22 F/decade (declining)
JAN -1.52 F (declining)
FEB -2.77 F (declining)
SPRING (-0.06 F/DECADE)- DECLINING
MAR +0.57 F (rising) but .dropped 10 degrees F since 2012 alone
APR -0.28 F (declining)
MAY -0.47 F (declining)
SUMMER (+0.48 F/ DECADE)-RISING
JUN +1.02 F( rising)
JUL -.08 F (declining) flat
AUG -0.01 F(declining)t flat
FALL( -0.44 F/DECADE)-DECLINING
SEPT +0.06 F (flat)
OCT -0.61 F (declining)
NOV -0.76 F (declining)
Summary
9 months are declining and 3 months are rising [ March, June and September]
TREND OF ANNUAL TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES IS DECLINING AT ( -0.36 F/DECADE)
ANNUAL ,WINTER ,SPRING and FALL have DECLINING TEMPERATURES
SUMMER has RISING TEMPERATURES ( due to June only)
since co2 increase lags temperature increase by 700-900 years, it seems that the current rise in co2 is the appropriate amount of time since the Medieval Warm Period. The time frames seems right.