A review of state-of-the-art climate data tells a different story than what NOAA tells the public.
While media outlets scream “hottest ever” for the world in June and July (it’s summer) and opportunistic climate crusaders use those headlines to push the idea of a “climate crisis” the reality is for USA is that so far most of 2019 has been below normal, temperature-wise.
Little known data from the state of the art U.S. Climate Reference Network (which never seems to make it into NOAA’s monthly “state of the climate” reports) show that for the past nine months, six of them were below normal, shown in bold below.
| 201810 | -0.18°F |
| 201811 | -2.56°F |
| 201812 | 2.39°F |
| 201901 | 0.63°F |
| 201902 | -3.15°F |
| 201903 | -2.81°F |
| 201904 | 1.55°F |
| 201905 | -1.13°F |
| 201906 | -0.14°F |
Above: Table 1, U.S. average temperature anomaly from October 2018 to June 2019. Full data file here
Note the below average value for June, 2019 at -0.14°F
The data, taken directly from NOAA’s national climate data page, shows not only that much of 2019 was below average, but that the US Temperature average is actually cooler now for 2019 than we were in 2005, when the dataset started.
The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was established to give the most accurate temperature readings compared to the old Cooperative Observer Network (COOP) which suffers from urban encroachment, siting problems, and a multitude of human induced inhomgeneities such as station moves, incomplete data, closed stations, and runway condition stations at airports that were never designed to report climate data.
Readers here know of my work to highlight these problems, and as a result, there was a 2011 report by the GAO about the problems with the old COOP network. They investigated a subset of the larger COOP network (The USHCN) and said:
According to GAO’s survey of weather forecast offices, about 42 percent of the active stations in 2010 did not meet one or more of the siting standards. With regard to management requirements, GAO found that the weather forecast offices had generally but not always met the requirements to conduct annual station inspections and to update station records. NOAA officials told GAO that it is important to annually visit stations and keep records up to date, including siting conditions, so that NOAA and other users of the data know the conditions under which they were recorded. NOAA officials identified a variety of challenges that contribute to some stations not adhering to siting standards and management requirements, including the use of temperature measuring equipment that is connected by a cable to an indoor readout device— which can require installing equipment closer to buildings than specified in the siting standards.
NOAA does not centrally track whether USHCN stations adhere to siting standards and the requirement to update station records, and it does not have an agency wide policy regarding stations that do not meet its siting standards. Performance management guidelines call for using performance information to assess program results. NOAA’s information systems, however, are not designed to centrally track whether stations in the USHCN meet its siting standards or the requirement to update station records. Without centrally available information, NOAA cannot easily measure the performance of the USHCN in meeting siting standards and management requirements.
Source: GAO-11-800 August 31, 2011, Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network https://www.gao.gov/highlights/d11800high.pdf
NOAA’s response? Rather than fix it, they closed reporting the USHCN subset of COOP stations in 2012. They now say this on their climate data page:
National USHCN monthly temperature updates have been discontinued. The official CONUS temperature record is now based upon nClimDiv. USHCN data for January 1895 to August 2014 will remain available for historical comparison.
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2019&month=12
Yet, while the USHCN was closed, and the data from it are no longer reported in the monthly and yearly NOAA climate reports, the problems identified in the USHCN persist in the larger COOP Network, of which several thousand stations remain:
All NOAA did was treat the visible symptoms we identified (by excising them), while leaving the larger disease uncured, and continuing to use the majority of data in it, data with the same sort of problems and inhomgeneities discovered in the USHCN subset. The USHCN was 1218 station out of over 8700 COOP stations, and that remaining data is used to calculate the U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset used to report “official” temperature averages today. Basically all they did was sweep the problem under the rug, and report that they have algorithms to “fix” bad data.
In any other branch of science, in the stock market, or in criminal forensics, “bad” data would be thrown out as unreliable.
Meanwhile, perfectly good data gets ignored in favor of “fixed” bad data. NOAA says this about the new state-of-the-art Climate Reference Network network:
The vision of the USCRN program is to maintain a sustainable high-quality climate observation network that 50 years from now can with the highest degree of confidence answer the question: How has the climate of the Nation changed over the past 50 years?
These stations were designed with climate science in mind. Three independent measurements of temperature and precipitation are made at each station, insuring continuity of record and maintenance of well-calibrated and highly accurate observations. The stations are placed in pristine environments expected to be free of development for many decades.
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/us-climate-reference-network-uscrn
The data from the rest of the world, as reported by NOAA’s Global Historical Climatology Network is largely composed of the same type of stations, with an equal to or even greater (due to lack of consistent quality control) set of data problems.
Unfortunately, NOAA doesn’t seem to think the data from this state-of-the-art US Climate Reference Network is worth reporting to the public. A scan of the last 5 years of yearly and monthly “State of the Climate” reports has not a single mention of this high quality data, preferring to cite the data from the old COOP network instead, now repackaged as the U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset.
In fact, for the June 2019 State of the Climate Report, NOAA is claiming that the US was 0.2F above average in June, when in fact the US Climate Reference Network reported the June data as below average at -0.14°F
The June contiguous U.S. temperature was 68.7°F, 0.2°F above the 20th century average, ranking in the middle third of the 125-year record.
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201906
So what is the correct US Temperature for June?
In May, 2019, there was also a disparity. USCRN reported the national average temperature as below average at -1.13°F
While NOAA’s “official” climate report said it was only about half that, reading warmer by 0.43°F:
For May, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 59.5°F, 0.7°F below the 20thcentury average and ranked in the bottom third of the 125-year record.
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201905
It seems NOAA can’t even agree on reporting what the actual temperature of the United States is on a monthly basis, using their own old and unreliable data, while neglecting to report the best data they have. Why?
That’s a travesty of government incompetence worth investigating.
One wonders if screaming headlines about “hottest ever” this month would even exist if the world had a global version of the U.S. Climate Reference Network where the data was quality controlled, and measurements taken far away from the human induced heat of urbanization.
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Meanwhile the claims of a new UK record in Cambridge are based on a highly urbanised siting, within yards of two large, heat emitting buildings:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/07/30/new-record-temperature-but-how-much-of-it-is-due-to-uhi/
A site a couple of miles outside Cambridge meanwhile read 1.6C less
Cambridge Botanical Gardens (the site of the new UK Tmax record) is known by the Met Office to have significant urban heating starting around 1931, the date it was terminated from the mix of stations used in the daily CET record, see page 321 of:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
I don’t know about Cambridge, but I know a little about Paris Montsouris, where the latest record high jumped from 40.2°C (1947) to 42.60C a few days ago. Not much of a change of UHI effect there, lately.
Fortunately Paris isn’t the whole world, although if you’re any indication they seem to think they are. We call that “chauvinism.”
> Paris Montsouris, where the latest record high jumped from 40.2°C (1947) to 42.60C a few days ago.
You mean shortly after the end of WW-II that devasted the population and economy? And you don’t think there has been any change in UHI since?
My God, he actually said 1947, didn’t he? 72 years with no change in UHI. My delusion detector is stuck past redline.
François said: « Not much of a change of UHI effect there, lately.»
UHI increased in Paris-Montsouris. In 1947 the peripheral highway (boulevard périphérique) didn’t exist and Montsouris was still near the abandoned fortifications. Furthermore, min-max mercury thermometers have been replaced by Pt100 fast response, frequently sampled thermometers. The +2,4°C difference is probably the result of those two changes.
At the isolated rural station in Mont Ventoux, the 1947 summer record was only exceeded by 0.2°C (with perhaps as much as +2°C resulting from the replacement of mercury thermometers by Pt100).
Paul, don’t forget the German one for the same reason.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/germanys-new-record-temperature-is-the-result-of-usy-siting/
Since 2014 it’s told to change the location, because of irregular measurments (3k higher than surrounding stations) , but the record has been accepted by DWD, German Weather Orgnisation.
One reason:
Station in question
Source (german)
the chart is data from 2014 with only projections to 2019.
it says it right on the source page linked: “”National USHCN monthly temperature updates have been discontinued. The official CONUS temperature record is now based upon nClimDiv. USHCN data for January 1895 to August 2014 will remain available for historical comparison.
the real data is here: https://www.climate.gov/maps-data
Good thing the chart is not for USHCN but USCRN!
“A site a couple of miles outside Cambridge meanwhile read 1.6C less”
If you mean the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, it reported 38.1°C, relative to the Bot Gardens 38.7°C.
Nick
No, he is referring to the Cambridge University site. The botanical site is highly suspect as I also noted. It has enormous new buildings directly next to it stuffed with solar panels and Cambridge is encroaching all round as the city rapidly grows.
the 38.1 was also suspect due to the new building immediately around that site. These sites are known officially to have problems. The Kew gardens temperature was likely the record at 37.9
tonyb
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/weather/daily-text.cgi?2019-07-25
” While retaining three stations, we replaced the Cambridge (Botanical Gardens) station with Rothamsted Observatory in 1931 because of evidence of urban warming at the former by that time” … Page 321 of:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/Parker_etalIJOC1992_dailyCET.pdf
NIAB is NOT outside Cambridge. It’s in the WNW of the urbanisation and at the moment has massive roadworks nearby, rebuilding the A14-M11 junction.
What is your source for the 38.1C figure? I ask because hourly figures from weathercast suggest a lower figure:
25.07.2019 17:00:00 35,4
25.07.2019 16:00:00 37,6
25.07.2019 15:00:00 37,2
25.07.2019 14:00:00 36,4
Paul Homewood!
“The NIAB site only registered 38.1C.”
Anthony,
It would be nice if the surfacestations.org database would get out of maintenance mode.
Also, the note about an attack is undated so I don’t know whether to still expect safe mode.
[snip – wildly off topic, not to mention rude – mod]
Some USCRN data sets include soil temperatures down to around 100 cm especially in agricultural areas (La Junta, CO) for planning seed sowing. Comparison of these soil and air temperatures reveals a rather interesting phenomenon.
As the earth rotates beneath the sun and at dawn the air (at 1.5 m) and soil warm up together, peaking around noon, then the air then cools rapidly (low heat capacity) while the soil (high heat capacity) cools slowly until the air is cooler than the soil. The air remains cooler than the soil until the following dawn. That evidence refutes the notion that the air warms the ground.
The sun warms the surface, the surface warms the air.
RGHE goes belly up!!
Interesting about soil temperatures – I’ve always thought that if the atmosphere were actually warming then heat must be creeping into the soil/ground. The fact that soil temps haven’t been prominently used to validate the ‘warming’ atmosphere fuels my skepticism.
There’s an isotherm down around 50 feet where the heat upwelling from the core meets the solar downwelling into the soil.
Trending these soil temps through the seasons is illuminating especially when the surface freezes followed by an air warming sunny day.
The data is easy to load & paste into Excel and then trend all kinds of combinations.
While I certainly don’t have research quality thermometers or data, and I am mostly in a suburban environment, I have been noticing daily temperatures both subjectively and from a number of different thermometers for the last couple of decades. Summer temperatures as measured by my body, and by all thermometers to which I have access, peaks at around 6 PM during the hottest eight weeks. That builds from around 3 PM hottest in spring and to about 3 PM hottest as the autumn proceeds. In the middle of summer it has been still at 100F at midnight; 80 to 90 at midnight isn’t unusual.
I have done much hiking in the (relatively) nearby mountains for years, often from before the last of the snow is completely gone until it starts snowing again. I strongly prefer above 6000 feet. That altitude is overall more interesting, definitely cooler, and free of poison oak. While I have never had thermometer readings except from my car at start and end of hike, the daily temperature swings seem about the same, time wise, as down in the valley.
Temperature is often a topic of causal conversation, especially when it exceeds 100 F for days on end. I don’t recall anyone , ever, who didn’t experience late afternoon as the hottest part of summer days. Any idea why this is different than the air vs soil mentioned (i.e. the air continues to heat for hours after noon)?
Maybe its not different? Everybody pays attention to air temperature but how often do you measure the ground temperature? Maybe the ground really is hot enough to keep warming the air past noon.
Oldie
USCRN soil data proves exactly that!
Nick – did you analyze the data with that result? Does the temperature peak around noon, or several hours later? On a different time scale, summer solstice marks the beginning of summer, the hottest days come much later…
I agree that the surface warms the air.
The peak was a general comment. It could be refined. Might have been a little past noon.
Did dozens of studies. Have a couple of typical PPTs. How to post or get to you? Could post on my LinkedIn site.
I can provide instructions to prepare USCRN for Excel data tables.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html
Open/save/print documentation file to get data column keys.
Select the frequency: hourly, daily, monthly.
Select the year.
Select the station, e.g. La Junta, CO.
A text field will appear.
Open an Excel sheet.
On the text field:
Right click, “select all”
Right click, “copy”
In upper left Excel cell click, “paste”
Go to Data tab, click “text-to-column”
Select “delimited” & “next”
De-select “tab” and select “space” & “next”
Select “finish”
Now you need to apply your Excel skills to organize, identify columns, etc.
I did a couple of quick examples. Looks like it peaks around 1500.
Nick, a soil temperature peak around 1500 hrs agrees with what I was taught years ago, that the hottest part of the day is (usually) between 1400 & 1500.
After 1500, the suns lowering elevation means that incoming radiation is travelling further through the atmosphere, resulting in cooling at ground level.
Well, traveling further through the atmosphere has nothing to do with it.
It’s the oblique incidence that spreads the ISR contact patch over a larger area.
Any solar engineer placing panels can explain.
Nick,
“Well, traveling further through the atmosphere has nothing to do with it.
It’s the oblique incidence that spreads the ISR contact patch over a larger area.”
Care to develop this?
Intuitively, ray boorman sentence seems right. I mean, less chance to get your eyes burnt when looking at the sun post 1500 than between 1400 and 1500. And there is no oblique incidence involved. So there is less ISR coming to the surface, regardless of incidence on the surface itself. So the cooling post 1500 is both because more atmosphere to travel through and more spread due to increased incidence angle. No?
Romain,
Suggest you Google some solar engineering articles about incidence angles.
When the sun is straight over head or when you look straight at it the 1,368 W/m^2 rays arrive plane parallel and are the most intense. (Corrected for albedo as applicable.)
Point a spot light straight at the wall, nice round spot.
Now tilt it sideways, Notice how the patch becomes oval. Same light but spread over a larger area. That’s what happens to the sun when it strikes a spherical earth.
The oblique surface receives fewer W/m^2. That’s why some solar panels have tracking mechanisms so they always point square toward the sun, maximum intensity.
Nick, thank you for your answer. I understand what you are saying. More surface for the same incoming flux = less energy per surface unit.
My point was that you seem to dismiss the fact that, when the sun is not overhead, the incoming flux is already reduced BEFORE reaching the ground, as suggested by ray boorman.
The solar panels, despite always facing the sun thanks to tracking mechanisms, will receive less sunlight/energy in late afternoon than at noon. Because sunlight will be absorbed /scattered/reflected by more atmosphere.
Romain,
“Because sunlight will be absorbed /scattered/reflected by more atmosphere.”
Under clear skies this is trivial. Absorbed? not so much. Place a radiometer perpendicular under a clear sky and the absorbed might be a few percent. Here again, reference solar engineering handbooks for calculating how many W/m^2 arrive, surf/ToA.
And the atmosphere is ludicrous thin.
A meter is 3.28 feet. A km is 3,280 feet. A mile is 5,280 feet a meter is 3,280/5,280 =0.62 miles.
NOAA/NASA say the atmosphere ends around 100 km or 62 miles. Picture some nearby distance. Colorado Springs is about 65 miles. I commuted for four years. Contemplate in your mind’s eye what little distance that is. I could punch a Viper through it in under 20 minutes if it weren’t for gravity and my lack of a Viper.
What’s more 99% of the atmospheric molecules are below 32 km, about 20 miles. It’s those molecules that do all the actual work, all the heavy lifting, scattering/reflecting etc.
The sun heats the surface, the surface heats the air molecules.
0.04% CO2 heats diddly.
http://nei.nust.na/sites/default/files/projects/Irradiation-Measurements-On-Ground_CSPS_v0.2.pdf
Slide 6 is the most interesting.
Nick, thank you very much for your prompt answers and the link.
Yes, slides 6 and 7 are exactly what I was referring to and what ray boorman was saying.
You said “Well, traveling further through the atmosphere has nothing to do with it.”
While from what I take from your link, it has an effect of about 100 W/m2 between 1200 and 1600. Compared to about 200 W/m2 difference between horizontal and normal irradiance (ISR spread in a larger area).
So ok, the “thicker atmosphere” effect is only about half of the “surface spread” effect. But this is not “nothing”. But I am probably nitpicking, I think we are in agreement. Thank again for taking the time to answer me.
I’m not advocating any particular theory but science is supposed to consider all possibilities.
Is it possible that the cooler air in these measurement sites is still radiating enough IR into the soil to make it heat even as the air itself is cooling? Perhaps the soil is just better at storing heat energy (which would not seem to fit the radiation increasing at the fourth power of the temperature increase theory)?
I understand the general idea that temperature, via energy, doesn’t flow that way but it is also the case that radiation goes where it is pointed, regardless of temperature differences.
“Is it possible that the cooler air in these measurement sites is still radiating enough IR into the soil to make it heat even as the air itself is cooling?”
Absolutely NOT!!!!!!!
Well, yes the ground has more thermal mass and stores energy. That’s what trombe walls and rock & water filled barrels do in solar designs.
“…radiation goes where it is pointed, regardless of temperature differences.”
This is flat not so!!! Hot to cold – and NOTHING else!!
Here is an experiment in the classical tradition that demonstrates clearly why BB radiation from the surface is not possible. BB requires a vacuum.
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
So, Nick, if there are IR emissions from the air, which seems to be considered true basic physics, and emission direction is random and more or less evenly distributed, which seems to be considered true basic physics, where does it go when the emission is in the direction of the ground?
More generally, if any cool(er) objects radiates, how is that radiation prevented from reaching the hot(ter) object?
I realize that if the ground is radiating more upward than the atmosphere is radiating downward, no net heating can occur — and if there is heating is should be momentary because any increase of temperature results in an increase in radiation (fourth power) but all that is irrelevant as to whether or not emissions reach the ground, about which you wrote
“This is flat not so!!! Hot to cold – and NOTHING else!!”?
Andy,
Two surface one hot & one cold left to their own devices, i.e. isolated.
The hot will cool and the cold will warm until they reach equilibrium.
Under no circumstances will the hot get warmer or the cold get colder.
UNLESS – you insert work in the form of a refrigeration loop which moves energy from the cold to the hot.
BTW pointing an IR instrument at the sky and claiming a temperature or power flux measurement is totally clueless about how these instruments function.
Radiation by definition requires a surface. What surface is there in the sky?
And what about emissivity?
IR instruments are fabricated and calibrated assuming the sources are BB. That’s wrong. Apogee instructions actually warn the operator of this potential error.
These text boxes kind of limit detailed discussion.
Much of these debates revolves around defending the various alleged mechanisms contrived to explain how the atmosphere warms the earth ala greenhouse.
As pointed out elsewhere the atmosphere does not warm the earth, it cools it ala reflective windshield panel.
That explains why those explanations and mechanisms are so contentious. They “explain” what does not exist.
HERE> Enter your variables. You will see all averages are 1-2 degrees higher. We have been warming hard since 1997. The movement of chart slopes downward does not mean temps are falling. To fall, they would have to go below -0- into negative territory. Moreover, these are temperature anamolies which means the deviations if based on hot recent years 1997+ is going to be a lesser deviation (anamoly) than the years before 1997.
[b]
The official CONUS temperature record is now based upon nClimDiv. [/b] (NOT USCRN).
says so right on the page.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=climdiv¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=ytd&begyear=2019&endyear=2019&month=7
“…HERE> Enter your variables. You will see all averages are 1-2 degrees higher…”
Higher than what and over which period?
“…We have been warming hard since 1997. The movement of chart slopes downward does not mean temps are falling. To fall, they would have to go below -0- into negative territory…”
A trend slope downward does indeed mean a trend of falling temps. And no, temps do not have to go into negative territory to be falling. You don’t understand the data and the charts.
“…Moreover, these are temperature anamolies which means the deviations if based on hot recent years 1997+ is going to be a lesser deviation (anamoly) than the years before 1997…”
Except that it doesn’t work that way on the site. The average temperature anomaly for July 2018 is 1.49 deg F if I do 1895-2018. If I do 1997-2018, it is still 1.49 deg F. The anomalies are calculated across the entire period from 1895. Again, you don’t know what you’re talking about on the site you link to.
“…The official CONUS temperature record is now based upon nClimDiv. [/b] (NOT USCRN).
says so right on the page….”
It also says it in the article above:
“…National USHCN monthly temperature updates have been discontinued. The official CONUS temperature record is now based upon nClimDiv…”
The whole point went right over your head, apparently. Maybe you should read it again since you clearly missed portions of it. Then again, it appears you are unable to comprehend it, anyhow, so you should probably skip it and get some remedial math and English.
This observation raises yet another concern about scientific mismanagement or misconduct with USCRN data.
Imagine that you developed a new scientific instrument with far greater sensitivity than others available. Imagine that you wanted to begin a fresh new measurement record to serve as the gold standard for others to follow. You are THE reference now.
In your field, Others tend to use anomalies to track and trend data, so you do the same.
Now, instead of beginning your new gold standard measurement record at an anomaly of zero, you pollute it by using poorer quality data to set the starting point at +2.1 or something ridiculous. This leads future observers to conclude that a downward slope in the data does not correlate with a decrease in the measurement over time, but instead inexplicably shows a long run increasing trend.
I vote for scientific misconduct, but perhaps you think it is mere incompetence?
Well, locally in Portland, OR, we’ve had a cool summer.
July cold news-
Snowfall and bitter cold hits Cape mountain ranges
2½ ft of snow shuts down Argentina airport
Another “Ship Of Fools” Runs Into 10-foot-Thick Ice
Fifteen cold records broken in Queensland
Russian city breaks 107-year-old cold record
Snow more than 10 ft deep at Balea Lake
Record cold in Slovakia
Cold record in northwestern European Russia
Puking Snow in the Aussie Alps
Below average temperatures in Japan
Another snow surprise in another Turkish city
Record cold in Hungary
July snow in Poland – Nobody expected this!
July Snow in Romania
Record cold in Brazil
Well-below average cold in Europe July 7
Several record lows in the Trans-Baikal Territory
All-time record cold July temp in parts of Germany July 6,
New all-time July cold record in the Netherlands
Norway mountain passes closed due to snow and cold – In July
Iceagenow
Indeed, in Los Angeles it’s been very mild. Quite nice.
In the deep south summer is always hot. But this summer has been only a little hot. We even had some downright cool evenings where the air temp was about the same as AC inside. I dunno if this is AMO shifting into cool phase or if thats still a good 10-20 years out. We get a lot of ocean effects down here.
It’s sad to see our host wholehearted adopting the word “normal” instead of average. This just in the alarmists favour.
There is nothing “normal” about the average over some rather arbitrary 30y period. Calling the average “normal” implicitly accepts the notion that any change is abnormal. From there you have already planted the idea that is not of natural cause and therefore manmade.
when the press report that June was 0.2 deg above normal, there is a smug “we told you so” behind the head lines. WUWT should be clearly be calling an average an average and emphasising that there is nothing more normal than deviations from the mean.
Far from being “normal” , temperature being the same as the average value is a pretty damned rare occurrence.
noted, fixed, thanks
Thank you. I’ve been bitching about the use of the word “normal” (by Environment Canada) supplanting “average” for years. I believe it’s a deliberate ploy to sway public perception.
“Calling the average “normal” implicitly accepts the notion that any change is abnormal.”
In this case I’d say the opposite is true. The “normal” period is 1981 – 2010, the warmest three decades in the NOAA data so far.
No, MISuse of the word “normal” when it is actually “average” is complete nonsense, as it assumes ANY variation, in ANY direction, is “abnormal,” which is simply not the case.
Ditto for the MIS use of “anomaly” which makes it sound, once again, like ANY “departure from average” is somehow “abnormal.”
I agree there are problems using words like normal or average without specifying the period used for the average. But my point was that using the most recent 30 years as the “normal” period is especially misleading as it’s a period already warmer than much of the last few hundred years at least. The problem is that no matter how much the climate changes you don’t notice it if you are only comparing the current temeratures to those of a few years ago – it just becomes the new normal.
I’m not sure how you can discuss the current climate without comparing it to some base line.
Agreed. The endless use of such a nonsensical concept as a “normal” temperature (as if it exists) is a ridiculous and needless segue into an unnecessary and convoluted explanation about “normal” not really meaning “normal” (but rather referring to an arbitrarily selected 30-year period) and how “anomalies” (ANOTHER just plain stupid and misused term) aren’t really “anomalous” at all, just departures from the relatively meaningless “average.”
So who can hold these people accountable? President? Congress?
I understand it is so cold in Siberia that they moved the thermometers indoors to both keep them from freezing and to make readings easier to take
Ha ha
Maybe. UAH
I’m too busy at this moment to dig up the reference but … I seem to recall that old well-sited American surface stations show very little, or no, temperature increase over the past century. I wonder if anyone has dug into the satellite record to compare it with those stations. It could be that the modern warming is nowhere as uniform as the alarmists insist.
So the answer is to set up a world wide quality Climate Reference Network.
It would be cheaper and more effective than any other solurion.
We may well find the world is not warming at all!
Unfortunately I can already hear the screams form the politicians and massive government departments funded to “mitigate climate change”.
Not to mention the abuse from the government funded university based institutions dedicated to showing a “warming world”.
Even if the temperature rise is only one third of what these groups have claimed (shown by the surfacestations.org analysis), then we do not need to waste the multi billions the politicians propose.
How is the USCRN data handled? Who does the data analysis and archiving?
Is there any danger that this data will become tampered with?
In 10 or 20 years when it is still flat or cooling, will there be political pressure to make some adjustments when the truth does not fit a narrative? It certainly looks like NO cause for alarm !
There was recently a NOAA “quality corrected” raw data set released that reduces various area high temperatures (such as in the 1930s) and erases various area cooling trends recorded over decades, no?
There’s something fishy. Plot from link below gives june 2019 ClimDiv anomaly as -0.29 degF and may 2019 ClimDiv anomaly as -1.30 degF. USCRN anomalies are those mentioned in the post, -0.14 degF for june and -1.13 degF for may.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2019&month=6
Good catch. Yes there is. Curiouser and Curiouser.
NOAA in State of the Climate Reports talks of 20th century average and those anomalies I mentioned above use 30 years from 1981 through 2010 as their base period. Could that be the reason for differences?
..anomalies yes
So now we have three different values reported by NOAA for June.
But at least with three different values, there will be opportunities to creatively adjust the final values to produce any desired result. I wish I could have 3 readings for my bank balance….
Add them together and divide by 3 to get the correct value /s
So that means it was two economists deciding the actual value!
Its just different baselines for anomaly calculation. The page comparing USCRN to ClimDiv uses 1981-2010 baselines; the State of the Climate report uses 1900-2000 baselines. Would be nice to have consistency here, but the choice of baseline is ultimately irrelevant to determining the change over time. Regardless, this post is quite confused, and USCRN shows higher temperatures than NOAA’s ClimDiv (and USHCN) dataset rather than lower: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2019&month=6
This is priceless
” but that the US Temperature average is actually cooler now for 2019 than we were in 2005, when the dataset started.”
File this graph and conclusion, when ever you hear about some pine bark beetle, shifting growing zones, or tropical disease range moving. If the alarmist says it has gotten worse in the past 10-15 years in the USA, we can say with some confidence that the changes are not from a warmer climate.
NOAA said the average GLOBAL temperature in June was 1.71 degrees above average. Since the USA only represents 6% of the land on earth, what is the problem here?
Methinks that may be the point of the story.
With another problem Donald being that the US represents a pretty huge land area upon which increasing carbon dioxide is having no effect wrt temperature.
The United States is a special place! We have managed to neutralize the evil effects of CO2 over the United States which keeps our temperatures much lower than the rest of the world. 🙂
Not really. Since 1979, US temperatures have been increasing at about 0.26°C / decade, quite a bit faster than global temperatures.
That’s only a trend, starting from the coldest weather the US has had in quite a long time. Besides, when I do the calculation using NOAA’s GHCN Monthly summaries of TAVG, I get only 0.18° C.
If I start from Jan 2000, the rate is only 0.15° C. Move up to seven years ago, and the rate from 2012 to now is practically zero.
So, for the past three-quarters of a decade there has been no statistically significant warming in the contiguous US at all. It’s ridiculous to claim there’s an impending climate disaster, when nothing’s been happening since the start of Obama’s second term.
I’ll double check my figures when I get a chance, but NOAA’s own chart shows a trend since 1979 of 0.48°F / decade, which is about 0.26°C / decade.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/tavg/12/6/1895-2019?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1979&lasttrendyear=2019
I used 1979 as the start point just to compare with satellite data, but you get similar results if you start in 1970 or 1990. Certainly, if you look at the last couple of decades the rate is much lower, but this is starting from quite a high point.
” Move up to seven years ago, and the rate from 2012 to now is practically zero.”
Of course, 7 years is a meaningless period to be looking at trends. I make the rate of change since the start of 2012 as -0.39° / decade. Far from being practically zero temperatures have been plummeting the last 7.5 years. But start in 2013 and the rate is +0.83°C / decade.
The problem is same what “they” are screaming about MWP. “It wasn´t global, because it wasn´t warm everywhere at the same time!”.
They are right, of course. But today it´s different, because we use global average now. It´s not warm everywhere, but you must pick cherries to get the right answer.
Someone is impersonating me. I did not write the 1:06 PM post that uses my name.
We are aware, that one seems to have slipped past us. Thanks for the heads up — Mod
Regarding “In fact, for the June 2019 State of the Climate Report, NOAA is claiming that the US was 0.2F above normal in June, when in fact the US Climate Reference Network reported the June data as below normal at -0.14°F
The June contiguous U.S. temperature was 68.7°F, 0.2°F above the 20th century average, ranking in the middle third of the 125-year record.
Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201906 “:
So, the .2 degree F above normal was .2 degree F above the 20th century average, while the .14 degree F below normal was according to a dataset (USCRN) whose baseline can’t be its 20th century average because USCRN started in 2005.
Sorry, Klipstein, your’e wrong on all counts.
NOAA does in fact apply the same baseline to USCRN, so that it can be compared to the US Climate Division.
SEE: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2019&month=12
And notice that we now have THREE different values reported by NOAA for June now.
USCRN -0.14°F
US Climate Divison: -0.29°F
State of the Climate: +0.20°F
So tell me, which number is the correct one? Note: your personal opinion doesn’t count, which one is correct from NOAA?
Just a comment: those are not temperatures, they are calculated differences from some baseline. How each is calculated, and what is the baseline for each, could readily make for differences. Without enough detail information it isn’t possible to say much of anything.
The State of the Climate states the CONUS average as 68.7°F, and comments that that is 0.2°F above the twentieth century CONUS average. The USCRN and ClimDiv numbers are relative to the WMO standard 1981-2010 period.
Nick Stokes: If USCRN anomaly is with reference to 1981-2010, then how correct is it for one to argue that USCRN anomaly according to such a baseline that is mostly pre-USCRN measurements is correct, by someone who argues that USCRN has a different warming rate than the dataset from the authority that “established” the baseline? For that matter, the author of this article stated that the .2 degree F positive anomaly according to the dataset he was criticizing was with reference to 20th century average, not 1981-2010.
“by someone who argues that USCRN has a different warming rate than the dataset from the authority that “established” the baseline”
Well, that isn’t me. But as I noted below, NOAA in the notes to the graph explain how they do it:
“So as not to compare apples and oranges, the departures of nClimDiv and the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) values from normal values for each network are compared rather than the absolute values. The 30 years from 1981 through 2010 provide the basis for the normal period for each month and network. Data exist for nClimDiv from 1895 to present, so a normal is simply the 30-year average of the gridded data. USCRN observations since commissioning to the present (4-9 years) were used to find relationships to nearby COOP stations and estimate normals at the USCRN sites using the normals at the surrounding COOP sites derived from full 1981-2010 records (Sun and Peterson, 2005). The normal values for each month are then subtracted from each monthly temperature average to create anomalies or departures from normal that can be compared between networks over time. “
But of course trying to relate USCRN to a 20th century base would be a real stretch.
Not just a stretch, but a blatant counterfeit.
And by choosing the 20th century as a baseline all those adjustments do not go wasted.
Regarding “Sorry, Klipstein, your’e wrong on all counts.
NOAA does in fact apply the same baseline to USCRN, so that it can be compared to the US Climate Division.”:
How is a baseline of 20th century average of one dataset to be argued as the baseline of another dataset that starts in the 21st century by someone who argues that their warming rates are different?
Anthony,
I think part of the problem is everyone pretends one of the numbers is the “right” number. But what are the margins of error associated with each? Are there overlaps for any of them? I feel comfortable the USCRN is our best measurement at this time as it is not a processed number as I understand it. But even it has to have a margin of error associated with it.
That has been the M.O. of “climate science” ever since the CAGW trope was born. As long as the putative need for a panoply of “adjustments” is accepted, the “data” will conform to the narrative. After decades of dealing with apparent bureaucratic incompetence in Asheville, I can no longer believe it’s simply that.
Anthony – do you have a comment on this issue of weather station numbers as posted today over at Pierre Gosselin’s NoTricksZone:
https://notrickszone.com/2019/07/30/two-european-professors-ipcc-climate-modeling-methodology-opens-door-to-fake-conclusions-manipulations/
It’s an old story and a little OT but declining station numbers in an era of climate obsession seems very odd.
I have reached the same conclusion. With CAGW requiring massive economic upheaval in a short time you would think massive ACCURATE data would be a high priority.
Declining numbers of accurate stations reeks of fishy.
Who needs actual empirical data when one has infallible computer models?
Above normal. Below average. Well within operating parameters.
Too hot. Too cold. Never just right.
A review of state-of-the-art climate data tells a different story than what NOAA tells the public.
Unless I’m mistaken about the base period used for USCRN (1981 – 2010), there doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference between it and the official NOAA figures for contiguous USA. If anything the official values are slightly lower.
Month NOAA USCRN
201810 -0.44°F -0.18°F
201811 -2.71°F -2.56°F
201812 2.31°F 2.39°F
201901 0.74°F 0.63°F
201902 -3.58°F -3.15°F
201903 -2.86°F -2.81°F
201904 1.08°F 1.55°F
201905 -1.30°F -1.13°F
201906 -0.31°F -0.14°F
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series/110/tavg/all/6/1895-2019?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1981&lastbaseyear=2010
When you look at the average temperature bar graph it makes you want to yawn about the whole thing
If you want anything to change, you have to identify individuals who are accountable for poor data. NOAA is a name behind which too many are able to hide. Don’t let anyone hide. Someone is responsible for those data. Name him or her.
You guys are far from scientists. Go play outside and stop trying to be data analysts!
You’re comments are amateurish – leave science to scientists.
The world is warming. Duh. Go waste your time trying to debunk something more complex than air temperature. Like maybe the effects on our land from sucking oil out of the ground for hundreds of years. Or how about sea level rise?? I’m sure you think that’s fake news too!
(Then YOU are an alleged scientist, who can make these unsupported disparaging statements to people, some here who are actual scientists or have a significant science background, and be credible in doing it, when all you did was look foolish and immature in doing it) SUNMOD
Rich, well done, you’ve just revealed yourself to be a fool to a substantial number of people.
WUWT site has been compromised with a WordPress Malware Redirect Hack. I get random redirections to install Flash Playr when clicking on links on the site. Please resolve this issue. See this info for details
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You are viewing this on a mac or iPhone, right?
We just ran a scan. No issues, might be malware on your device.
Marc
You could try installing some ad-blocking app, I find Firefox Focus works well on the iPhone.
I have been getting redirects from WUWT articles (or ads in them) to suspicious sites on my non-iPhone phone for a couple years, at least weekly in recent months. Although less freqwuently, I have gotten such redirects on my non-Mac computer for at least a couple years.
use duck duck go
This is the correct response.
“In fact, for the June 2019 State of the Climate Report, NOAA is claiming that the US was 0.2F above average in June”
No, as the displayed quote shows, they say it is 0.2F above the 20th Century average. In fact they state the average in absolute 68.7°F; the comparison with 20th century is a comment. The NOAA has been doing this in their annual reports for years, believing that it is a figure their readers can most easily relate to. Whether that is so or not, they state it quite explicitly.
The other numbers quoted are relative to the standard WMO period of 1981-2010. I don’t know why the simple issue of what base period an average refers to causes so much trouble here. Explaining that in their background to the graph, they say:
“So as not to compare apples and oranges, the departures of nClimDiv and the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) values from normal values for each network are compared rather than the absolute values. The 30 years from 1981 through 2010 provide the basis for the normal period for each month and network. Data exist for nClimDiv from 1895 to present, so a normal is simply the 30-year average of the gridded data. USCRN observations since commissioning to the present (4-9 years) were used to find relationships to nearby COOP stations and estimate normals at the USCRN sites using the normals at the surrounding COOP sites derived from full 1981-2010 records (Sun and Peterson, 2005). The normal values for each month are then subtracted from each monthly temperature average to create anomalies or departures from normal that can be compared between networks over time. “
As some have noted, relative to the 1981-2010 period, the USCRN figure for June (-0.14F) was actually higher than the ClimDiv figure (-0.29F).
Ah Nick defender of bad data and arbitrary baselines, the issue is simply this: NOAA publishes three values, and nobody can say with absolute certainty which one is the right one. They are all constructs based on choices.
Climate science data seems to be mostly opinions and choices. Absolute data, rather than anomaly data, doesn’t have these problems.
Of course, nobody gets worried when looking at absolute data, it isn’t scary enough.
” NOAA publishes three values, and nobody can say with absolute certainty which one is the right one.”
The values they published were -0.14°F for USCRN, -0.29°F for ClimDiv, and 68.7°F for the ConUS as an absolute average. In publishing the latter, they commented that it was 0.2°F above the 20th century average. That is a clear and separate comparison. You can compare to anything you want. The USCRN and ClimDiv figures in fact differ by only 0.15°F.
Just repeating what they actually said:
“The June contiguous U.S. temperature was 68.7°F, 0.2°F above the 20th century average, ranking in the middle third of the 125-year record.”
Typical apologist obfuscation
Which value is the “right” one Nick?
That 68.7F absolute value is based on the crappy old COOP network they claim they can “fix”. So I don’t trust it.
If they had a lick of sense, they’d throw out the COOP data rather than trying to fix it, and just go with CRN data, which in my opinion is the only trustworthy surface data on the planet. The rest is just a concoction of errors, assumptions, and in the case of GISS, “special sauce”.
” they’d throw out the COOP data rather than trying to fix it, and just go with CRN data”
With just USCRN they would have only 15 years of data. And be ignoring a huge number of measurements around the country. The fact is, USCRN and ClimDiv give almost identical results over the period of USCRN.
I can just imagine the complaints of “hidden NOAA data” if they scrapped the ClimDiv record.
Nick,
You are correct that they define their baseline. They did it in May, too, and I suspect it is part of what they do to obfuscate what the data is showing. Using a 125 year record is done nowhere else, and the 20th Century average starts just post-Little Ice Age, with much lower temps than today, and so the average is lower and they can make the useless statement that June 2019 was 0.2F warmer than the 20th Century average. Big deal.
They are just bmasking the fact that the decade of the 1930’s is still probably the warmest in the CONUS, and warmer than the last decade, comparing 1929-1938 vs 2009-2018. While I can’t guarantee that is true for the US as a whole, I recently was able to show that is exactly the case for Ithaca, NY, to the consternation of a bunch of folks at a climate alarmist class at Cornell, which conveniently hosts the NRCC, Northeast Region Climate Center.
Drawing a line for the CONUS absolute average (68.5F) through the US temperature record would most likely intersect in the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, around 1960, and 1980’s. So June 2019 is as warm as it probably was in the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and 80’s… very scary. But that’s not close to what the narrative is about.
Anthony, very nice meeting you last week. BobM.
Bob,
“They are just masking the fact that the decade of the 1930’s is still probably the warmest in the CONUS”
How are they doing that? They are just comparing to a familiar period that does include the 1930’s.
The thing about quoting an average in absolute T is that it isn’t very meaningful. People don’t know whether 67.8°F is warm or cool for a CONUS June. So they try to relate it to something that people might consider as normal, and they have chosen 20th century.
Nick,
“They are just comparing to a familiar period “…
But it is not a familiar period, weather-wise, certainly not the earliest decades. I would conjecture that most of us have experienced roughly half or less of 20th Century weather, and what we are experiencing now is just not that remarkable.
Sure, “People don’t know whether 67.8°F is warm or cool for a CONUS June”, but NOAA could inform them very easily. I disagree that “The thing about quoting an average in absolute T is that it isn’t very meaningful”. People easily relate to an absolute T. What they don’t relate to is an anomaly in hundredths of a degree based upon an average from 1951-1980, which is even more arbitrary.
A simple statement such as “the average June temperature for the last 100 years was X, and June 2019 is Y, and including the high-low range would, to my mind, be much more informative for the vast majority.
0.2°F above the 20th century average.
And THAT is climate panic! Oh boy, soo scary, in cooling world.
That’s one month in one country. There was climate panic in the US during the 1930s, yet June 1935 was about a degree cooler than this June at 0.85°F below the 20th century average. One month doesn’t tell you everything.
1 degree is just not freaky….
Anthony, Mods:
I would have liked to put up my take on this USCRN, trend of 0.057 deg/decade.
We have not been able to put up images or graphics for a long time.
Is there any thought to getting a website format which supports all the old features we used to enjoy?
There was much value in posting our own take on things. I feel that WUWT was much stronger and vastly more interesting for the lively debates which followed. Now with the website updating only once per hour, even holding a conversation is no longer practical. The whole website seems much impoverished without all features we used to interact together.
Any News?
Re. temperature readings. Are we dealing with fiddles of the data, or just
plain incompetence ?
MJE VK5ELL
Well, yeah, June was slightly below “normal” being in the 60s daytime and 40s at night, with an occasional move to about 71F. I keep track of things in my area, as it’s more pertinent than the larger continental area.
Most of the cooler temps for June this year and last year are due to cold air coming off Lake Michigan from the north. It’s not all that unusual, just delays my interest in wearing lighter summer clothing. Humidities were pretty average, and there was LOTS of rain after the end-of-April snowstorm. Since this is Year #2 contiguous to Year #1 of this cooler weather, it’s also noteworthy that during the first week of July – as with 2018 – the weather got hot and the heat wave lasted about 3.5 weeks, and we’ve returned to nice, cool low 70s daytime weather.
All that rain sure did make the sweet corn sweeter.
So what was the problem, again? Oh – yeah, NOAA doesn’t want to deal with the truth, or something like that? Just asking, to be sure I understand that part. Maybe some day that will change.
Just a side note: the weather forecast (from NWS local) was for mid to upper 80s this week. It has since changed to 70s from now through Tuesday next week. Dew points are consistently in the 60s overall.
The cooler weather is nice, but humidities are kind of low. We need rain now. There is NO dew on the plants or grass in the mornings.
June was cooler than normal when the raw data were measured, but warmer than normal after the data was massaged (i.e. fudged) in late July.