Guest eye-roll by David Middleton
From Yale Climate Connections
ASK SARA
‘How is climate change affecting summer weather?’
Look out for heat waves, dangerous deluges, and air pollution.
By Sara Peach
Monday, July 1, 2019
Dear Sara,
I would like to read your prediction of the effects of climate change on the traditional four weather seasons.[…]
I ask the question because I have some suspicion that that’s going to change in some way, shape, or form. And I don’t look forward to that.
– Claude in Durham, North CarolinaDear Claude,
Now that summer is upon us, I’m returning to your letter. As you’ll recall, there’s so much I can say in reply to your question that I’m breaking my answer into four parts – one for each season.[…]
Broiling, steamy weather
As the globe warms, summers are growing hotter. Humidity is also rising in many U.S. cities.[…]
How to protect yourself
Climate change is altering summer weather in ways that could be harmful to your health.[…]
Wondering how climate change could affect you or your loved ones? Send your questions to sara@yaleclimateconnections.org. Questions may be edited for length and clarity.
Yale Climate Connections
Explore the “Ask Sara” archive.
ASK SARA
How is climate change affecting summer weather?
– Sara pretending she’s Claude in Durham, North Carolina
As the globe warms, summers are growing hotter.
– Sara in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
Not in North Carolina
The slope of the average temperature is only 0.0055x… That’s 0.55 °F per century, with an R² = 0.0084… The slope of the high temperature is only 0.0011x… 0.11 °F per century, with an R² = 0.0003.
Dean Wormer would call this…
Not in the U.S. Southeast Region
Surely the Southeast Region’s summers must be getting hotter…
No! And don’t call me Shirley!
The maximum summer temperatures have actually decreased a wee bit since 1895: Slope = -0.0009x; but there’s no actual trend: R² = 0.0003.
Not in the Lower 48 United States
- R² Tmax = 0.011
- R² Tavg = 0.027
- R² Tmin = 0.051
The closest thing to a significant summer warming trend is in the minimum temperatures… Is an increase in the average summer low temperature from 58 °F in 1885 to 60 °F in 2025 really a transition from normal weather to “broiling, steamy weather”? Particularly since less than 50 years ago, we were here…
Who is “Sara”?
Hi, I’m Sara Peach.
For nearly a decade, I’ve reported on the most pressing environmental issues of our day, with a special focus on climate change. My work has appeared in National Geographic, HuffPost, Scientific American, Environmental Health News and Grist, among others. I’ve won awards!
Since 2016, I’ve been an editor at Yale Climate Connections, a climate news website and radio program that airs on more than 400 stations nationwide. I also write the “Ask Sara” climate advice column.
I’ve been a guest speaker, workshop leader and moderator in university and nonprofit settings. One client called me “the most well-prepared moderator we’ve ever had.” I’d be happy to chat with you about your event.
Previously, I taught for five years at the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Sara Peach, Journalist/Speaker
Sara, you’ve earned eleventy gazillion Billy Madisons…
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Tom Abbott
1. “I also provided you with links to show you why I don’t trust the figures you use.”
And the reason for me NOT to trust in these links’ contents, Tom Abbott, is the fact that Goddard aka Heller repeatedly made unduly comparisons between GHCN V3’s unadjusted and adjusted variants, which led to his incorrect claims that GHCN V3 adjusted would show faked warmth.
Not only were his claims often absolutely wrong, as the adjustments were due to valuable corrections of measurement biases between consecutive periods; Goddard also restricted his claims solely to examples where the trend for adjusted data was higher than the unadjusted origin, and never showed any inverse case.
*
Now back to your wonderful NASA graph, which I know since at least 10 years:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
2. You write
“And so everyone knows what we are referring to, here is the U.S. surface temperature chart, Hansen 1999, along side a Bogus, Bastardized Modern-era Hockey Stick chart.”
I apologise for the remark, but… it seems to me that your competence in puncto time series is inversely proportional to your tendency to polemic.
2.1 Why do see a Hansen chart on the left, and some anonymous chart on the right? Jesus, Sir! Both were originating from the same source at the same time.
2.2 Didn’t you manage to see the great difference in scale between the two, chosen in order to adapt the plots’ deviations from their mean to the windows’ size?
While the US plot shows deviations between +1.5 and -1.5 °C, the Globe plot lies within +0.6 and -0.6 °C.
If the graphs were generated using the same scale, you hardly would be able to understand what happens on the right chart.
3. You write
“Especially when you have examples from all around the world whose temperature profile resembles Hansen 1999, and you have no examples of unmodified temperature charts that resemble a Hockey Stick.”
Where are these examples? When were these examples produced, and on the base of how many stations?
4. You write
“You will see that NASA claims it is plausible that the U.S. temperature chart looks completely different than the global temperature chart. But does that sound logical to you?”
Of course it does! Again I ask you: Why should the Globe look like USA’s backyard? CONUS is no more than 6 % of the land masses.
A propos: dis you have a closer look at Figure 2 on the NASA page?
Here is one more time a comparison of CONUS with the Globe, made out of GHCN daila daty, which is completely unadjusted (inlike GHCN V3 and V4, it even doesn’t contain any adjusted data variant).
4.1 CONUS
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bHlDr8B8wl-Mg5DeWFyJT7aLkLTRoELx/view
As you can see, the CONUS deviations are here even double as high, dur to the lack of homogenisation.
No significant warming.
4.2 Globe, together with GISS land-only
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tzLtqxUgJEhWhL-kAYYqIhxZF_5SZggr/view
Here too, higher deviations from the mean: no homogenisation.
The difference between GHCN daily’s raw data and GISS land is amazing (same trend for 1900-2018: 0.10 °C / decade; trends for 1979-2018: 0.19 resp 0.22 °C / decade).
If you now produce the graph anew with the same boundaries as for CONUS, you obtain this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pSmIJKrCVXFmBKAe0tZDoA5cfTQ4JLDr/view
Well, this one is less ‘alarmistic’, but I like to look at small details, and thus prefer the other one.
5. Oh! Where is the hockey stick?
It is virtually present, but
– my windows have a very different with/height ratio compared with NASA’s above:
– there are many many more stations around the world, and completely different processing algorithms, making earlier graphs simply obsolete.
Take it or leave it! Sorry, but I don’t mind.