Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I keep reading that the freezing cold weather in Houston, Dallas, and the central US is the result of “global warming”.
When I heard that, my first thought was, … “Whaaa?? How would that work, that getting warmer would make it colder?”
Following up on that logic, my next thought was, “I wonder just how much colder the world would have to get in order for Houston to never freeze again?”
That sounded like a great thing to me, no more ice and snow, because I’m a tropical boy. After two decades of living on lovely warm Pacific islands, when I see the ice jumping out of my nice drink with the little umbrella in it and running around covering up the landscape, I call that “Water behaving badly!”.
So I thought I’d take a look and see just how cold the globe would have to get for the US to stay warm all the time. I figured I’d see how many days of the year it’s been freezing in Houston, to see just how much “global warming” was increasing ice and snow there. Here’s that graph:
Hmmm … doesn’t look like “global warming” has increased freezing in Houston. But undeterred, I kept looking. I figured that Dallas must show some sign of the dreaded “global warming” making icy streets and frozen pipes more common …
Well, it was starting to seem like the theory that “global warming” makes things colder wasn’t looking all that good. But I reckoned that surely, in the heart of the US this mystery phenomenon could be found. So I looked to Oklahoma City to show me the truth …
Sixty days a year below freezing? As a tropical boy, I can only say YIKES! But I digress …
Now, to be clear, this is just three cities. So I suppose it’s possible that “global warming” is making some city somewhere icier, making frost and burst pipes more common someplace … but it sure isn’t happening in Houston, Dallas, or Oklahoma City.
Here on our Northern California hillside with a tiny bit of the Pacific visible in a gap between the hills, I live in a climate anomaly. The area between about 600 to 800 feet (180 – 240 m) elevation on the western face of the first range of hills in from the ocean in this stretch of the coast is called the “Banana Belt” because it stays warm. We’re at about 700 ft elevation, and we can grow guavas and avocados on our land.
But a mere quarter-mile (half a kilometre) from my house, on the eastern side of the ridge, it routinely freezes every year. Me, I can’t recall the last time it froze where I live … go figure. The world of climate is a weird and wonderful place.
My warmest and least icy regards to all, and good will and prayers for the afflicted folks in Texas.
w.
PS—Misunderstandings are rife on the web. So when you comment, PLEASE quote the exact worlds you are referring to, so we can all understand who and what you’re discussing.
neat. do days above 100
where?
same places
Well if you do “days above freezing” you’ll get the opposite.
Would be good to see Tmax graphs
The actual Tmax, before adjustments
Here are the population numbers for Houston
In 1900 around 44,000 in 1940-the start of Willis’s chart 348,000, in 2013 over 2 million and according to the 2020 figure somewhere around 2.3 million.
It would be interesting to know where Houston temperatures are measured. That population increase and the urban sprawl must have some effect
Tonyb
Sorry, here is the link
coh_hist_pop.pdf (houstontx.gov)
Hummm …. graphs look a bit like “EPA heatwave index”
😉
Hasn’t NASA already declared this the hottest February EVER in TX?
Not yet, but wait until temperatures are adjusted
Adjust for what? Temperature?
The sun so hot I froze to death!
“It rained all night the day I left,
The weather it was dry,
The sun so hot I froze to death;
Susanna, don’t you cry.”
Stephen Foster – Oh Susanna
Seems it’s been happening for a while!
Yes, and it was confirmed already by the doomsday clock handlers.
Thanks for the kind wishes, Willis
I had a no power situation 17 years ago due to ice and snow….a gas water heater saved me from having to leave for a day – temp was maybe 25F. I would fill all sinks and tubs and some large pots with hot water and repeat when it cooled. I see Callyfornia wants to get rid of natural gas too. There are natural gas powered electric generators for homes and businesses.
Good time to invest in companies that manufacture backup electricity generators.
Mohatdebos, I own one of the backup generators and it is a great security blanket. The generator doesn’t care what the grid problem is, heat, cold, blowing winds interacting with power lines, flood, drought, it is always there good to go. Highly recommend this security blanket, but be sure to keep gas in an approved container and change it twice a year.
And make sure that gas does not contain ethanol.
Even when fossil fuels are banned? Maybe you will need to shop wood.
But wood will be banned too!
They tried that in the 20 and 30’s with alcohol … history teaches lessons 🙂
No it doesn’t. Alcohol was banned in the 20’s due to shrieking women and wealthy CEO’s with agendas funding them. Nothing has changed about that.
Back up generators running on natural gas are a great back stop…. as long as the natural gas supply can keep up with demand. Once the demand reduces the major supply line pressures to dangerous low levels, gas supply will be rationed with rolling gas outages. And if we are headed into a trough of significant global cooling, it’s hard to imagine the infrastructure getting ahead of the curve. Remember, politicians are picking the winners and losers, not the free market.
Didn’t AOC promise fossil-fuel free backup generators?
All you have to do is plug them in!
Callyfornian politicians are sooo STUPID! Berkley is banning gas connections in new construction.
So nothing unprecedented.
We find that a lot when we look at actual numbers.
when you beat the record cold by 25F, it might be unprecedented
This cold spell in Texas set some records, but not by 25F. More like a degree or two.
How about record cold when viewed over a weeks time?
Historic cold in D-FW: A look at the record-breaking past few days | wfaa.com
try 14 at least
billtoo, being as how this is a science site, how about you provide a link for that claim? I find it quite unbelievable, but I’ve been wrong before.
w.
In Oklahoma City, about 3 hours North of Dallas, local weather stations listed temps at one point as 54 degrees below average for date and either just beating, or a tie with cold record for date, set 99 years before.
FWIW, the coldest temperature ever recorded in Oklahoma was 20 below zero(F), a record set within the past 10 years.
I was at Ft Sill ’82-’84 and remember a very bad winter, lows in teens with windchill below zero. Had a large field exercise that got cancelled because of it, volunteered to remain in field to secure equipment. Was never so glad to be in a gamagoat with the engine running as that during that two weeks. Brutal.
Correction/update.
The lowest temp ever recorded in Oklahoma was -31F, set in Feb., 2011, and the Monday’s previous daily record low of -15F was broken with a -22F in Kenton, OK.
It’s funny how after just a few days, my memory of what I thought I’d heard on the weather report was so different from what actually happened. That goes along with Willis’ request above, for links to actual info and data, rather than individual takes, relying on swiss cheese memory.
https://oklahoman.com/article/5682412/oklahoma-winter-weather-a-look-at-the-records-broken-so-far
Yes, as Anthony reported. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/10/coldest-temperature-ever-recorded-in-oklahoma-31f-today/
Here in eastern Oklahoma at my house, it got down to -10F,
The old record at my house was -5F.
I think Oklahoma as a whole barely broke some cold records set back in 1905 and 1918.
Historic cold in D-FW: A look at the record-breaking past few days | wfaa.com
first link in my search confirms a shattering 14 degrees. just my first link. I’ll find more for you.
Monday: High of 25°, low of 8°
from:
A Full List of All The Record Cold Texas Temperatures (baynews9.com)
“New record low temperature for Feb. 15 (old record: 38° in 1909)”
New record for Feb 15? Who are you kidding?
OK. one more. numerous double digit record shatterings
Numerous records broken during this historic winter storm | KTXS
ok heck. one more. wish i could slow or pause the cine loop, but it is what it is.
look for the numerous black dots that signify “all time record low” and deep blue “monthly record low”
(Unofficial) Record-breaking temperatures across the Globe (coolwx.com)
When one examines the graph of the daily temperature means and extremes for a given location, a very obvious pattern emerges, and the graphs are mostly smooth curves.
However, many such graphs have irregularities that indicate that we do not have enough years of data yet, for record lows and highs for a date and location to be a very good guide to how cold or hot it might get during an extreme weather event.
IOW, if the record low for a given place is 20° for February 12th, 13th, 16th, and 17th, but 28° for the 14th, and 31° for the 15th, no one should take it as some huge surprise when it gets down to 20° on the 14th and 15th.
Similar inferences about what the actual climate norms are can be obtained by comparing nearby locations.
Beyond that, am I the only one who finds it beyond deceptive to see a headline that says “Historic low temperatures are the lowest since 1989”?
If it was colder in 1989, what exactly is historic about it?
The answer is nothing.
It is just sensationalistic headlines and story writing.
It is not journalism.
More like yellow journalism.
And speaking of yellow journalism…how about some of the headlines from the New York Times today?
Blaming what happened in Texas on Climate Change.
For everyone wondering if this event would change anything, there is the answer.
The warmistas will not let a good tragedy go to waste…they will use it to try to double down on the failed policies that contributed mightily to the worst consequences of the Arctic outbreak.
Here is the NWS graph for the daily means and extremes for Abilene.
The spiky nature of the graph shows that there is no where near enough data gathered yet for a new record to be very significant, especially if it falls within the curve delineated by existing record lows and highs.
It might take 1000 years to get a smooth curve…or it might never be smooth, if during the 1000 years, there are even more extreme events which only occur rarely at that time scale.
“The Coldest Night in Texas History
If you think it’s cold this week, let us tell you a story of record cold temperatures that were experienced in the past history of Texas.
February 1899 was a very cold month, thanks in part to a bitterly cold outbreak from the 11th through the 13th. In fact, nothing in the history of Texas quite compares to February 12th 1899.
Some of the coldest weather to ever hit Texas occurred on February 12th of that year. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the state occurred at Tulia in Swisher County in the extreme southern Texas Panhandle. The thermometer dropped to 23 degrees below zero. However, there were unofficial reports that were even colder. Low temperatures of 30 degrees below zero were measured that night at Wolf Creek and at a site southeast of Perryton, both in Ochiltree County in the northern Panhandle. This cold air spread throughout the state with reports of a thin layer of ice coating most of Galveston Bay.
The all-time record low temperature that was established at Tulia was tied years later when Seminole, in Gaines County in West Texas, reported a temperature of 23 degrees below zero on February 8, 1933.
Many Texas cities established all-time record low temperatures In February 1899. Below is a list of the record lows at various cities across the state.
Abilene………….9 below zero…set in 1947
Amarillo………..16 below zero…set in 1899
Austin…………..2 below zero…set in 1949
Beaumont……..10 degrees……set in 1906
Brownsville……..12 degrees……set in 1899
Corpus Christi…..11 degrees……set in 1899
Dallas/Fort Worth….8 below zero…set in 1899
Del Rio…………10 degrees……set in 1989
El Paso………….8 below zero…set in 1962
Galveston………..8 degrees….. Set in 1899
Houston………….5 degrees……set in 1930 and 1940
Lubbock…………17 below zero…set in 1933
Midland/Odessa…..11 below zero…set in 1985
San Angelo……….4 below zero…set in 1989
San Antonio………0 degrees……set in 1949
Waco…………….5 below zero…set in 1949 and 1899
Wichita Falls……12 below zero…set in 1947″
The Coldest Night in Texas (weather.gov)
Isn’t it odd that 1933 had one of the coldest days of the year, and yet 1933 was also one of the hottest years in US history.
How can this be? Both the hottest and the coldest?
It depends on how the jet stream is configured.
During the summer of 1933 a high pressure system hovers over the center of the US bringing very hot temperatures to all areas underneath the high-pressure dome.
Then, the high-pressure system drifts to the west and is centered over California, instead of over the center of the US, and this configuration allows for cold arctic air to come down into the central United States on the east side of the high-pressure system.
I think 1936 was an even more dramatic example of this.
Also during the 1930s in the US, some of the worst dust bowl years also had horrific flooding over the eastern US in the same years.
It may seem odd, but as you said, what causes one condition causes the other as well.
The average temp of the whole planet does not change by large numbers of degrees over short spans of time, but local and regional temperatures can and often do vary by many tens of degrees from average.
For both things to be true…small change in global temp but large change in regional temp, and large changes in temperature have to be counterbalanced by the opposite variance somewhere else at the same time.
Large heat waves probably mean that some other place on the globe has below average temperatures.
Similarly, if it is extremely dry over one region, someplace else is almost surely abnormally wet, or so it seems to me, and so it has been apparent when I actually look at the particulars.
The reason is that the amount of water evaporating from the surfaces of the ocean is probably constrained to be similar from one year to another, and even from one month to another and one decade to another.
The TSI does not vary much, the GAST does not vary by many degrees, and although cloudiness can and does vary a low, the fact that climatic data shows long term averages of precipitation to be stable tells me that clouds average out and the amount of moisture evaporating from the oceans does as well.
And so if there is drought over some large area, there is almost surely someplace nearby that is getting all of the rain the drought area is missing.
And that is what I have found to be the case whenever I have looked.
So it has been very far below average over a large part of North America for over a week now.
If we look we should be able to find some place or places in the northern hemisphere with temps far above normal.
How to check on that?
Here is one source, linked below.
And a quick look shows at least two places, both over oceans, where very warm air seems to be abnormally far to the north for the middle of Winter.
Looking further, China looks to be rather mild, as does Western Europe
earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions (nullschool.net)
BTW, through most of this Winter, including the last week, Florida has been very warm…hot even.
We had some frosty nights a few weeks ago, and today was cool day for the first time in over a week.
Mostly we have been in the mid 80s the past two weeks.
We will be back to 80’s by Monday, and the forecast for the next ten days keep us in the 80s into March.
March is a warm month in South Florida…it is nearly Summerlike by the end of March.
Record cold…lately.
But including periods that are not lately…
100 Years of Southeast Texas Weather
Records get broken…all the time.
Warm and cold records.
Record for the date, record low high temp, record for one city but not others nearby, record for most locations reporting a daily low temp record, all time record low for a town, all time record low for a state…
These all count as record lows.
And we often find even with such reports, that it only means recently.
One thing is for sure…if it happened before, it will happen again.
Everyone here knows warmistas are full of crap and making it all up.
We are in a warm period, nothing more.
Multidecadal oscillations and temperature patterns are the rule, not exceptions, particularly in mid latitudes.
And we only have sparse records going back a little over a hundred years for many places.
Who ever said the last 130 years is a representative sample of how much the weather can vary?
Houston and Galveston both had heavy snow on December 24, 2004, Christmas Eve. Victoria Texas had 12 inches. As I recall, Galveston was near 12 inches.
Keep in mind that snow can happen at fairly warm temperatures, so is not really a measure of how cold it is.
“Who ever said the last 130 years is a representative sample of how much the weather can vary?”
Probably no one. But from the above comments I get the idea that both hot and cold records have been set across the country over that time frame with reasonably accurate measurements.
So, with the figures that are apparently available, what would a plot, by year, of the number of new “record highs” and new “record lows” across the US show. Are we currently setting more record lows per year than record highs compared to the past 130 years, or the opposite?
A couple of years back, Illinois set a new all time record low temp.
People froze to death in their kitchens.
One guy froze to death, a college student, walking from the door of his dorm building to his car a hundred feet away.
Another guy died outside his house when he went out to see about something in his garage.
But other states did not set such records.
That same Winter, California set all time snowiest Winter records.
Locations in the desert Southwest had snow that no one could recall anything like it.
The Great Lakes were 100 percent frozen over.
The Potomac was frozen in March.
A few years before, the ocean froze as far south as Delaware and Maryland, maybe further.
Icebergs washed ashore in Mass.
The Eastern US has notably had several of the worst snowstorms on record in the past decade.
But some storms in history sound so insane we have to wonder if they are true. They probably are, and will eventually repeat.
Even in northern locations, ice storms are famous for causing widespread power outages that can effect many whole states and take months to repair.
One thing is for sure…no one ought to be surprised that it will still get cold, and it can get as cold or colder than anyone thinks likely in any place there is, and can do so at any time…although mid February is a likely time for really bad cold weather.
No seriously…it is.
Recall this?
Why would anyone think that it is not getting cold anymore?
From coast to coast the list of amazing Winter severity in just few years is long.
Amazing Footage of the Atlantic Ocean Frozen Solid at Old Silver Beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts (laughingsquid.com)
In fact it was less than ten years ago that cold weather knocked out power across Texas.
Arctic outbreaks hitting Texas are not rare.
Losing power over whole states due to cold is not even unheard of recently, not even in Texas:
Texas Was Warned a Decade Ago Its Grid Was Unready for Cold – Bloomberg
And Texas wasn’t the only ones having problems, the whole Southwest Power Pool, a group of 14 western States, were having rolling blackouts to one degree or another.
I would like to know if these rolling blackouts in the Southwest Power Pool were caused by increased demand alone, or did they have problems similar to Texas with conventional generation systems and with their windmills?
We know that none of their solar farms were working, since the whole area of the central US was covered by snow, but what about their windmills? Some claim windmills can be rigged so they don’t freeze up at all, and we do have situations where they work in cold weather, but is this always the case? What are the limits of windmills and cold weather?
I would like to see how well the windmills did that were located north of Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s windmills all froze, so did they freeze north of us?
I was working the DFW Metroplex from the 10th through the 18th. The low temps I encountered starting with the morning of the 11th were 29, 25, 18, 12, 5, -1, 18 and 22. Some of those could have been daily records but certainly not Winter records.
It would seem to me that the duration of cold temps combined with snowfall amounts were unusual. 1989 had similar snowfall but without the long duration cold temps. My recollection is 1903 had similar snowfall and cold temp duration.
so far they’ve blamed everyone from Trump to Cruz…..but China gets a free pass again
Cliff Mass https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/ has an excellent commentary on his weekly podcast.
Willis,
“The odds are that what we can expect as a result of all this global warming is more of a pattern of this extreme cold.”
-Dr.John Holdren -20/1/2014.
“War is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
George Orwell tells a scary story. And it’s getting scarier because it is getting more real.
Conservatives and freedom lovers need to step up now. We have a narrow window of opportunity.
I think I just saw a new conservative star in Rachal Campos-Duffy, who hosted an hour on Fox for the last week. She did a fantastic job. Fox executives need to hire this woman and give her, her own show.
I see a lot of young conservatives like her starting to express themselves.
Rush taught us well. It’s time to pass the torch to a new generation. Defend our freedoms from the attacks of the totalitarians.
Joseph:
My new T-shirt that I had made says: “Make Orwell Fiction Again”
I did not originate the saying, but it is very appropriate.
Orwell is one dead white man who should be required reading in
all Humanities & Social Science departments.
Yuh, I think they’re now too busy with ethnic and feminist studies. (nothing wrong with that only there’s too much of it)
Willis, that’s because there are dozens, if not hundreds of climates around the planet.
To talk about just one homogenous climate is arrant nonsense.
Thank you for confirming that fact. I’ve been repeating nearly the same words for years and people seemingly ignore it as unimportant. From grade 11 geography over 60 years ago …
That pretty much rules out climate being global. Our planet isn’t a “black body”, either any more than CO2 is a “well mixed gas” … and all things will never be equal. We’re fed a steady diet of generally accepted dreck and meant to pretend it’s science.
Idiots do not know basics, two (2) thirds of our planet. Is covered by water, and at the present. time in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, sweater report is ???????
That is.
An interesting wa. Y of writing that you.
Have introduced us to.
I am, curious: About where you.
Learned, Pun.
Ctucation.
?
Oh, yeah, and I will see your Middle of the Pacific Ocean Sweater report, and Raise You a Sahara Desert Mohair Tunic exposition. With a pair of red stiletto heals.
Where I live (Oakland/Berkeley Hills, i.e. libtard central), apparently we believe in science. It must be true, because I read it on more than one garden sign. Thank our lucky stars that we’re only pretending to make the world colder, although the money could be better spent on more important things than the human parasites who pretend they own calculators.
Thanks Willis, great graphs..
You’ve made my day, thanks.
You are looking at the wrong data Willis. Graph the variance/std deviation across the time period.
(You are caught once again, you will be banned yet again) SUNMOD
You want to find out how “extreme” the deviation from average(s) is/are.
If the variability increases over time, you will see higher highs, and lower lows.
variance from what?
That was in the 1930s
Hotter highs and colder lows
And if the variance DECREASES, and is affected by Urban Heat..
…. you will see what exactly we see now in the USA
Percentage of high temps DECREASING
Low temps becoming less cold in urban areas. (see Willis’s graphs for 3 large urban areas)
UHI will increase the variability (variance)
WRONG yet again
And NO EVIDENCE
As ALWAYS !!
On the contrary, UHI should increase night-time lows without affecting daytime maxima, thus reducing variance.
No. UHI raises minimum temperatures much more than maximums.
Completely wrong as usual.
Yes, it has been EXTREMELY COLD the last several days.
Cold records broken by WHOLE degrees or more.
Is that the point you are trying to make ???
Warming records are usually by tiny fractions of a degree in urban affected areas.
You are such a nil-educated twit…. why does Willis have to do your work for you ?
They’re fractions so small they fall between the margins of error for measurement. In other words they’re as likely to be – as they are +.
I don’t have to do any work, because Willis is not looking at the proper statistic. PS I will not call you a degrading name even if you are wrong about fractions of a degree.
Talk is cheap, Bethan. As the motto of the UK Royal Society says, “nullius in verba” … which means “trust no one’s word”.
Or as others say, “In God we trust … all others provide evidence.”
I’ve given you the data source. Please provide evidence by giving us a graph of what you consider to be the proper statistic.
Regards,
w.
You know what? I could wait a lifetime and you wouldn’t put up a graph. So … here’s a graph of the minimum daily temperatures that are below freezing for Dallas.
And here is the same data in standard deviations …
See what I mean about how the only thing that changes is the y-scale?
w.
Highlighting the FACT that you are INCAPABLE.
Thanks, but you have made that blatantly obvious. !
Except… I’m NOT WRONG.
You poor little sock….. just waiting for a hand so you can become a muppet. !
Beth @ phishing trap
You’re quirky use of the word “proper” suggests you’re from England, somewhere south? Proper job!
I think what you meant was “I don’t have to do any work, because I’m incapable of it ……”
I think you might have a credibility issue on here dude.
Once again, bethan just declares that she is right.
She’s highly insulted that anyone would ask her to back up her claims.
Define “average” temps. Over what time span? Since records were kept? A 30 year block of time that changes as time passes?
What do you mean by “average” temps?
Bethan, I gave you the source for my data. Call me crazy, but when someone instructs me, not asks me but instructs me to “Graph X”, my general response is quite unprintable.
However, since you are so certain that you are right, perhaps you could “graph the variance/std deviation across the time period”?
In passing, you seem to think that graphing the standard deviation will somehow give you different results than just graphing the raw data. It won’t. You can “standardize” any dataset by subtracting the mean and dividing through by the standard deviation.
But all that does is change the units on the y scale, period. It doesn’t re-order them or change their relative positions in the slightest.
In any case, I await your graphs.
Best regards,
w.
LOL you’re so polite Willis.
Anthony would have said words to the effect of “f – off Bethan”
(But his blog – his rules. Gotta work with that.)
Mr., I’m a reformed cowboy, and I’m doing my best to suffer fools gladly. Not always successfully, to be sure, I’ve been known to backslide … I’m a work in progress.
w.
We all are a work, Willis. I enjoy your posts and especially your responses.
As a ‘reformed cowboy’ you still kick ass’s but some are too stupid to know that they had theirs’s kicked!
As a ‘reformed cowboy’ and retired carpenter I have found that many creatures (mules, horses, burros, apprentices, libtards) really need a pop with a 2X4 to get their attention!
I’m not sure that the bethantroll has the IQ to qualify for idiocy!
Thanks, Willis, for all your clear, concise and easily understood posts
I’m sure this dealt with below, but why don’t you graph it, idiot?
bethan,
Willis just ‘handed you your ass’ yet again. I’m beginning to think you have it (your ass) well greased and fitted with a quick release for the frequency you have it handed to you!
“So I thought I’d
take a lookcircle back and see just how cold the globe would have to get for the US to stay warm all the time.”Get with the lingo Willis.
Thanks for confirming what logical people already know – warming does not cause cooling. COOLING causes cooling. Displaced arctic air can definitely cause cooling. But not warming.
Dear John Shotsky
Thank you for your application to join the Met Office climate team
Unfortunately all the answers you gave were incorrect. Warming causes cooling. Extreme warming caused by man creates extreme cooling. These are well known scientific facts
I regret to inform you that we will not therefore be offering you a job in the climate modelling team at the Met office.
We do have some vacancies for cleaners though.
Yours
Hey, if the position comes with a key to the server room, he should take it!
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Global warming is cooling.
I stumbled over this dandy definition of delusions:
Someone suffering from a delusion will go to any lengths to maintain their delusion. You know the alarmists are delusional when they will try to use absolutely anything to prove CAGW.
I wish I could find the link but it was a quip by Bill Clinton that Al Gore would argue that the sun rising in the east is proof of global warming.
I’m still waiting for ANYONE to prove AGW … never mind CAGW. Hell. I don’t even see any evidence for it.
Somehow when reading anything about how climate change needs to be prevented my mind wanders to the book 1984 by George Orwell.
R values would have been nice.
Mr. Lee, as you would expect, both the the p-values and the R^2 values for the linear trend lines will be small. After all, a straight line will never approximate such a dataset.
Given that, here are the values for Houston:
Dallas
Oklahoma City
Best regards,
w.
thank you.
So your graphs in fact show that global warming is a fact?
Days below freezing are in fact falling…
Did you really mean to show that?
Have you not been following the debate.
The “warming” is supposedly the global average temperature but what it hides is that nights and winters are slightly warmer
Exactly what the graphs show.
It is not hotter like people think, which is why they use the average.
If Willis performs the same analysis for days above 100 it will also show decrease.
Do you think less days below freezing is bad?
This is discussed daily around here
Notice the places chosen are large, expanding URBAN centers.
What it is showing is the UHI effect.
Days above 100C and above 95C are also falling in the US.
I’m thinking you meant degrees F Fred..
I sure hope so.
It’d be a pretty flat graph if meant days over 212F!
(Fred, please forgive us for having fun with typos.)
You’s all forgiven
But I won’t forget… }-]
D’OH !! yes, “degrees F”
Facebook continues to censor the distribution of WUWT articles in Australia. WUWT is not an Australian news site.
Don’t use Farcebook…. it is a haven for PETTY, ultra-left virtue-seekers.
The response being mooted by Australia authorities is to block all banking transactions to these companies like is done for terror groups. That will take their Australian advertising revenue down to zero and probably force them to pull out of Australia.
A fog-belter, eh? Artichokes? Bougainvilleas? Date palms? Prolly not.
I don’t blame you for not complaining about some minuscule warmth. The sun came out briefly today in the Willamette Valley for the first time this year. We jumped up to 50°F. I almost peeled off my outer layer. But by lunch time it was raining again, and we lost 10 degrees in a minute and a half.
Still there is hope that Spring will arrive eventually. Warmer is better. I like it warm, the garden likes it warm, the cat likes it warm, and the dog is always happy no matter what.
I wonder why so many people dread and despise warmth. Why else install windmills in the Petroleum Capitol of the World except to virtue gesture wildly that they are doing their phony part to lower the global thermostat? As if warmth was something to fear and loath. Mass insanity isn’t pretty, and woke is a joke. Try Awakening instead, people. Get with Warm.
“Fog-belter”? Nope. We’re generally above the fog, which is part of the reason it doesn’t freeze here.
w.
Willis, are these trends mostly just a confirmation of Roy Spencer’s recent posts on UHI?
These are big and ever growing cities. The trend follows population density that he pointed out?
Can you do same analysis but for three rural Texas/Oklahoma sites with little or no UHI?
Since the photos of the freezing are mostly in Houston and Dallas, and the claims are mostly involving Houston and Dallas, that’s what I used.
In any case, I grabbed the nearest long record to Dallas, which is Grapevine Dam, near Grapevine, Texas.
Grapevine itself has a population of ~ 50,000, but Grapevine Dam station is a mile or so out of town.
w.
Meanwhile according to DMI Arctic Sea Ice extent is greater than it has been in 6 years.
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (dmi.dk)
Antarctic just had the coldest January since 1978 and the Southern Hemisphere is having the coolest summer it has had in almost 10 years.
Antarctica set to coldest January since 1978, Southern Hemisphere hasn´t been so cold almost 10 years – mkweather
John Kerry and Al Gore along with various air head Hollywood types have crawled out of the woodwork now that the democrats are once again in charge and are flying around in their private jets preaching the same old “climate change” Gospel that if we don’t do some radical things we’re all gonna die. Biden has had the US rejoin the Paris Climate Accords despite Germany and France failing to meet their declared CO2 reduction goals by considerable margins while the US has out performed both in CO2 production and economic growth.
It is not and never has been about saving humanity from itself. It is, and always has been about control and domination, just like “gun control”.
have crawled back out of the wood work since the democrats have control
Kerry just pronounced that we only have 9 years, here we go again. PS, Thanks Willis as always for the analytical reasoning!
9 years until we move the goalposts again.
Nah, they’ve installed wheels on the goalposts now so they can be moved at moments notice! The climate alarmists will NEVER admit that their fanatical, religious delusions are not real; their whole universe revolves around their belief system, no facts necessary!
New location of goalposts:
They’ve blown through so many goalpost you’d think they would have scored something by now!
Well, all this is complicated. Requires decisions.
So 21 years ago decided to move to the beach in Fort Lauderdale.
Somehow, my desire to visit my original townhome in Chicagoland lessens each year since. Something about warm/cold.
Rud, you helped illustrate the truism with your feet. Warm, good; cold, bad. If a degree or two of global warming is such an existential crisis according to the warmunists, then explain that to northern retirees who voluntarily and excitedly experience 10-15C of warming in moving south to Florida, South Texas or the Gulf Coast.
And they aren’t all Americans either. Quite a few Canadians retire to Florida.
Rud, always good to hear from you, and your decision makes perfect sense to this tropical boy.
w.
But Rud, aren’t you getting flooded out by sea level rise every day ???
Didn’t bethan assure us that Miami is already under water?
“Something about warm/cold.”
… and possibly the murder rate?
Willis, your first graphic (the green one for Houston, closest to the Caribbean) is telling two stories. First: up to the mid-eighties there is a rising number of days below freezing. Then, from the beginning of the nineties we see a new trend: starting very low, there is an upward trend in days below freezing. Keep in mind the number of freezing days that 2021 will add to the graphic.
What we in fact see is changing weather patterns. Wavy vortexes over the US enable cold outbreaks southward. From the nineties a northward warm wave over the East of the US and over the West of the Atlantic was dominant and a large quantity of warmer than normal water has been pushed into the Arctic. This pattern enforced itself by the low pressure areas that could develop above the NE Pacific/Arctic (Barents Sea). That development of low pressure areas was stimulated by melting sea ice. Ice-free seas were freeing more water vapor above water that enabled the air just above the water to become 20 degrees warmer than the air above the ice before. Warmer air and more water vapor in that warmer air caused more low pressure areas to develop. The low pressure areas further battered the remaining sea ice and mixed the cold fresher water on the upside with the warmer and saltier subsurface Atlantic water below: further surface warming and less sea ice were the results. The pattern of diminishing sea ice over decades (the time needed for warmer water to go round the Arctic) is well visible in the graphics of Arctic sea ice content. See the decades in the following graphic:
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
Right now the warmer than normal subsurface Atlantic water reached East Siberia: the currents below the ice are from the north of Norway eastward along the northern Siberian coast and then follow their way around the Arctic to Alaska. In the summer of last year we saw the changing wind patterns that followed the progressing warm waters: warm and dry air was sucked in all the way from the Sahara over Arabia and over the dry Asian grasslands to the North of East Siberia, causing many wildfires over Siberia and extreme summer heat. A change in wind pattern.
Over Western Europe in recent years more high pressure areas could build up, starting in early summer and progressing to the end of the winter. From the eighties, the Western European winters were characterized by a continuous warm south-western flow. Low pressure areas above the Barents Sea sucked in the warm air from Cape Hatteras to the Arctic, taking with the flow extra low pressure areas to the North. But the winter pattern changed bit by bit.
This year (2021) the first time the low pressure areas were not strong enough to prevent the build up of a High Pressure system over Scandinavia in wintertime. A high pressure area over Scandinavia / the British isles in early February (just before the cold wave was visiting Texas) caused eastern winds in Western Europe: cold and dry winds from the East created the downward jump in temperatures well visible in the graphic below. Shortly after this happened, the cold outbreak in the US became visible.
https://www.knmi.nl/nederland-nu/klimatologie/maand-en-seizoensoverzichten/lopende_maand
Wind patterns in the mid-latitudes are changing. For Western Europe and the US this means that in the next years more cold outbreaks probably will follow. Arctic sea ice will stabilize and grow again, be it on a somewhat higher temperature level than 60-70 years ago. Until the next big step downward will become visible – hopefully not. We won’t like a next Little Ice Age, although changes in obliquity and long-term ocean cooling (since 5000-6000 years) suggest that this further cooling is what is going to happen in the centuries to come. Colder times show larger variations in global temperatures because the influence of ice and snow (reflecting solar) is growing. More wavy patterns in wind flow, at least on the time scale of thousands of years belong to a cooling trend. Understanding what was happening in the Arctic last decades is key: a higher variability with periods of stronger warming followed by periods of stronger cooling. And in Texas the city of Houston which is closest to the Caribbean shows most directly the change in wind patterns over oceans. It will be interesting to follow Houston’s winter temperatures in the decades to come.
No that can’t be! Texas will soon face driest conditions of last 1,000 years | NSF – National Science Foundation
Of course they are some of the same Bozos that in 2011 that Texas was in a “perma-drought”, shortly there after as it not uncommon Texas had a deluge and there was massive flooding in Houston. Fact is that Texas is wetter than now than anyone alive can remember. Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (noaa.gov)
Sorry about the errors in the post above. Time to go to bed. Been a very long day and I’m about cross eyed with fatigue.
rah: “Fact is that Texas is wetter than now than anyone alive can remember.”
Looking at your graphic it is clear that the colder periods show drier years and much higher variability in rainfall. With that in mind the near future for Texas might be drier on average and much more variable both in rainfall and in temperatures, being less affected from the warmer and more humid south and more from the drier and colder north. This will happen when indeed there is the change in the medium term trend (60-70 year cycle) that I think to see.
Thanks, Wim. I’ve asked this question often in various forums, but with no answer. You say:
What units are used to measure the “waviness” of vortices? People keep talking about the waviness of the jet streams and of vortices, but how is that measured?
Best to you,
w.
Willis: “What units are used to measure the “waviness” of vortices? People keep talking about the waviness of the jet streams and of vortices, but how is that measured?”
WR: I am often looking to patterns of anomalous temperatures like found on climatereanalyzer: https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/fcst/?mdl_id=gfs&dm_id=world-ced&wm_id=t2anom
Starting at the Arctic polar circle you can draw lines between the red and the blue areas over the mid-latitudes. Right now those lines show a very wavy pattern and that pattern coincides with winds from respectively the South and the North. So for me the air movements at the surface are showing the waviness, well reflected in temperature anomalies.
About the cause of the larger/minor waviness I can’t say anything. The ‘chain of events’ as you call it very well is causing a shift in pressure areas. They can grow or diminish in strength and/or position. Relatively small changes in oceans cause other patterns of wind flows. Looking at your graphics Houston is showing more differences in winter temperatures than the more inland cities of Dallas and Oklahoma City.
The Antarctic is incredibly stable, causing a constant high pressure area over its high and ice cold ice sheet with ice cold winds flowing over the surface on all sides from the south pole into the direction of the equator, keeping temperatures low and stable over the southern high latitudes. What is called ‘global’ warming needs to come from the Arctic region. That is where ‘global’ temperature changes originate. Oceans do the work, stimulated by low pressure areas that are dependent on warm water that is evaporating water vapor. When the ‘winter train’ of northward directed low pressure areas over the North Atlantic stops, there is room for outbreaks of colder air from the north. As a kid in the fifties in wintertime we always followed the weather forecasts to hear whether there was a high pressure area developing over Scandinavia. If so, we could prepare our skates: cold winds from the cold land in the east would follow.
The winter of 1956 followed a pattern like we saw this year in Western Europe: a rather sudden ice-cold period in February. In the fifties more cold winters followed, culminating in the three months of winter cold of 1963 over Holland and over most of Western Europe. Last week looking over a frozen Dutch Braassemermeer I remembered the skating tours over that lake long ago and I remembered the 1963 parking place for cars on the lake itself. I would not be surprised to see in the coming years more variable and on average colder winter weather.
I’m sorry, Wim, but like many others, you haven’t answered the question. If as a scientist you are going to claim that the vortices are “wavier” than they used to be, then you absolutely need to say how much wavier they are … and for that, you need to measure them in some given units.
So I ask again, what are the units of “waviness”?
Be clear, I’m not saying “waviness” can’t be measured. I’m just tired of folks claiming it’s increasing without any measurements or any units.
w.
The SI unit of wave measurement is the ‘Sombrero’
The scale range is … S, M, L, XL, XXL.
Derived from –
‘The Mexican Wave’
&
‘Mexican immigrants come in waves, wearing Sombreros’ .
So the science is settled.
The conclusion is the same – time to move south!
Best post of the year so far. “Hats off” to the newest SI unit.
Willis: ” you absolutely need to say how much wavier they are”
WR: OK, now I understand better that you want to quantify the waviness exactly. Looking at your graphics above, the cold from the north could reach Oklahoma City, Dallas and Houston in varying degrees. For Dallas and Oklahoma City there is a relatively small decrease in cold days during the last decades. Cold waves still could reach them relatively well. But not so for Houston. From the mid-eighties rather abruptly freezing days became rare. With your three graphics you yourself showed how deeply south the cold fronts reached. Probably the number of days with frost or the number of freezing days (the whole day below zero Celsius) is a good indication of the waviness during winter. For the warm waves northward another temperature can be chosen for the more northward locations. While northward flows of warm air often result in precipitation it could be that the latitude the rain fronts know to reach (for a certain month) also is a good indication of waviness.
Willis: ” you absolutely need to say how much wavier they are”
WR(2). A second option is to take an isotherm map as a basis.
Isotherms are lines that connect all places with the same average temperature for a specific period (month or season or year). For locations north and south of the isotherm it can be checked how often in a specific period a cold or warm wave of air passes that isotherm, reflected in the temperatures of the locations respectively south or north of the isotherm. Of course also the extent (to how far north or south) the waves pass the isotherm can be checked.
Willis, jet stream is usually marked by a line circling the globe, yes? That line is displaying the path of the winds with the highest speed, or the center of the wind stream. You could take the lattitude of most northerly point in the loop compared to the most southerly point, noting the difference as the value of the waviness, expressed in degrees of lattitude. If there are multiple waves, the number of waves could be a qualifier.
Possible … me, I’m not really looking to quantify it. I’m mostly asking, since so many people are talking about it, is there already some way that the waviness is measured??
w.
One measurement method is to count the warmunist press releases touting polar vortex waviness, as proof that colder is the new hotter.
Willis, Wim
There are parameters that define departure from circular shape. One (not perfect but at least a start) might be eccentricity e, the parameter defining an ellipse. This is essentially the ratio of the distance between the foci of the ellipse and the major axis. (A circle has zero eccentricity since the foci are at the center and not separate entities).
Or, you could use a parameter the “un-shape index”, here the un-circle index. This is the ratio of the perimeter of the shape to the perimeter of the area-equivalent circle. This parameter would show nicely both the dumbel-like distension of, or even the splitting in two of them by polar vortex.
The shape of the polar vortex is very un-elliptical, so that wouldn’t work.
And the “un-circle index” has a problem, which is that different shapes can give the same index.
For a rectangle, after some math crunching I find that the un-circle index is given by
.564 * (L + W) / sqrt(L * W)
where L is length and W is width
Similarly, the index for a right triangle is
.399*(B + H + sqrt(B^2 + H^2) / sqrt(B * H)
where B is the base and H is the height
For a 4 x 15 rectangle, this gives an index of 1.382.
But this is the same as the index of a 12 x 16 right triangle … and those are very different shapes
w.
It’s OK for a square to have an un-circle index of 1.3. It sort of means 30% different to a circle, in terms of perimeter to area ratio. OK the parameter does not give any information about shape specifically, just the degree of complexity and difference from a circle (the circle has the shortest perimeter to bound its area). In practice there are not many shapes of the polar vortex – circle, dumbell or blobby L shape or two circles. Un-circle index would give a reasonable parameterisation of the degree of distortion of the PV.
Another form of eccentricity
http://www.sonic.net/~rdabney/Photos/Words%20I%20Love%20Pictures/fountain-eccentric-50.3.jpg
Yes – could still be approximated as an ellipse.
Hatter Eggburn February 20, 2021 7:21 am
Umm … no. Here’s just a couple of shapes of the polar vortex, there are lots more.
and
I’m still in mystery how this can be quantified, or how anyone can claim that such “waviness” is either increasing or decresing.
w.
“… how anyone can claim that such “waviness” is either increasing or decre(a)sing.”
Well, for that I have the answer:
Get government funded climate research grant.
Make up whatever you want.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Willis: “I’m still in mystery how this can be quantified, or how anyone can claim that such “waviness” is either increasing or decreasing.”
WR: Looking at the pictures I see more clearly what you mean. There is another problem: the elevation where things happen. ‘What’ happens ‘where’ is always my central question and it is unclear for me what is continuously happening in the three-dimensional field. Besides it is difficult to discover what is ‘the cause’ and what is ‘the result’
For that reason I myself concentrate on the effects of what is happening at the surface. When there are more cold outbreaks southward or warm outbreaks northward I think to see a rise or slowdown in waviness but to be honest I don’t have a clue about what is happening exactly on high(er) elevations (upper troposphere, stratosphere).
Still it feels more safe to look at high pressure and low pressure patterns than to rely on ‘vortexes’. The development of patterns of high and low pressure is well explaining what is happening at the surface. Knowing the pressure patterns gives a good indication for the wind direction (and strength) to expect and wind is what transports the flows of warm and cold air. The surface flows are observable wavier this winter. China (Peking for example) earlier had its cold outbreaks.
It is interesting to have a look at a map of global seasonal patterns of high and low pressure areas. They are quite different for summer and winter. And they are never the same, being [an important] part of the continuously adapting systems of oceans and atmosphere and their mutual influence.
Great discussion. Dunno answer. But perhaps we can look at past ‘polar vortex’ episodes for an indication. Have begun that research.
Ultimately waviness is expressed by the curl partial differential of calculus
Leo, look at the pictures I added just above … don’t think the curl derivative is gonna help quantify that.
w.
Sort of CHAOTIC loops. !
When you have an outflow of frigid air funneled down onto the plains from the Arctic through Canada, you have to ask yourself how this can be caused by global warming when said Catastrophic AGW is touted by climate wroughters to cause Arctic Amplification – a warming rate that is 3 times that of the purported average global rate.
The only way a sane person could be convinced that this is possible would be if the global rate of warming was so tiny that the triple heating of the Arctic would not be palpable.
Certainly, after galloping catastrophic anthropo global warming since 1850, it should not be possible to break cold records by several degrees in Chicago (low minus 30s C) and a number of other places in the Midwest a couple of winters ago. Nor would sharks frozen solid in the sea off Massachusets be washing up on the beaches. Nor would Gulf of Mexico turtles suffering hypothermia need to be rescued and warmed back to life.
In over 80 years, I never heard of such events occurring before.
https://news.sky.com/story/frozen-sharks-wash-up-on-cape-cod-beaches-as-winter-storm-hits-us-east-coast-11196155
We had aligators in southern Oklahoma that were found in several rivers, and they were frozen half-way in and half-way out of the ice. Their heads and necks were up out of the ice but the rest of their bodies were below the ice.
The aligators go into a type of hibernation phase during conditions like this and apparently recover as soon as it warms up. I guess it helps to have their heads out of the water when they freeze. 🙂
I think we’ve re-discovered the Urban Heat Island
Would that be why the temperature graphs are all heading south = the cities are all getting larger
What about graphs of heat or energy content in the dirt, both the cities themselves and the land all around.
What I’m really fishing for is the soil moisture content and how it has changed over the last century
But, me being just a little devious, I’m really really wanting figures for Soil Organic Content.
Banana Belt seems entirely crazy, until, you get your head (and yourself ideally) around the Foehn Effect.
But you know already Shirley, from Santa Ana not very least
A large area of North East Scotland might count as a banana belt and seems quite insane considering how far north it is and that its up against The North Sea – a perishingly cold lump of water. Good place for growing all sorts of stuff you’d never thought possible
It was the craic about the ‘peeping ocean’ that said everything – you have a ‘particular arrangement’ of hills and mountainsides that cause the prevailing wind to reverse, in very localised spots.
Willis, you’ve got a Helm Wind
Are there ‘funny’ looking clouds sometimes?
Knowing weather in place: the Helm Wind of Cross Fell
I could do peeping, due South east ish, from my old place and see Cross Fell, its quite tall. Distinctive.
A typical Cumbrian July or August, I could have been cold damp raining foggy for days/week on end.
I could drive 10 miles due East, just over the top of the Pennines and be into Northumberland.
Combine harvesters, tractors and trailers would be moving around under crystal-clear blue skies. Apart from the clouds of dust they themselves were creating
Dust was virtually unknown in Cumbria
Come on,
everyone knows that when you cook pasta in the kitchen, it starts to snow and freeze in the living room.
When you turn on the hot water tap it can still be cold sometimes, but that depends on if you use wind or solar power. Thus natural variability is still involved … maybe a bit of natural-selection too.
I say it is getting cooler. Globally.
On coastal micro climate: here on India’s south east coast we found that the sea ‘s temperature influence can be felt up to 1.3 miles inland on light sloping (<100 ft) rural terrain.
Nice and warm and the sea shielding against extremes. Do stay in the shadow here though…
Well if you prefer, its the result of climate change.
Which where I live results in flooding and heavier rainfall and more storms and only the occasional heatwave. And also the occasional sub zero event.
Poor griff..
Its ACDS metal affliction still makes it think this is something other than NATURAL VARIABILITY
STILL WAITING for any evidence of global “climate change” due to human CO2
Remain in your ACDS abyss, griff, you will continue to be an LYING ignorant non-entity.
“I keep reading that the freezing cold weather in Houston, Dallas, and the central US is the result of “global warming”.
“it was starting to seem like the theory that “global warming” makes things colder wasn’t looking all that good”
Come on Willis, don’t make out you don’t know the prediction is about more variation; warm and cool, not just cooler. Do one of your fabled analysis of whether say Chicago’s or Dallas’s temperature has become statistically more or less variable over time.
Come on loy-dodo, don’t make out that the so-called “predictions” cover such a huge range of outcomes……
… as to be TOTALLY MEANINGLESS.
PRODUCE something other than evidence-free gobbledy-goop !
You haven’t got the ability to do ANY of that, though, have you Loy-dodo
Stil the DESPERATION and DENIAL as you see your little fantasy AGW CULTISM crashing down around you.
Have you found any empirical evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2 yet ??????
Or are you still a total abyss…..
Here’s yet another chance for you to FAIL PRODUCE EVIDENCE..
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human released CO2 causation?
What prediction?
That loydo will post some warmunista drivel. So far? 100% accurate.
Typically according to climate history there is increased variation amplitude in temperature during periods of cooling, not warming.
So retreating from “global warming” and moving to “climate change” as more variation, is effectively an admission that climate has turned to cooling.
We’re both the warming and the cooling, the reduced and the increased variation, caused by CO2?
Is there anything that is not caused by CO2?
“there is increased variation amplitude in temperature during periods of cooling, not warming.”
Do you have a link to any supporting evidence for this? I’m not saying you aren’t correct but its a bit of a blanket statement, which cooling periods and how much variablity for example?
ROFLMAO
Loy-dodo asking for evidence.. that is hilarious 🙂
You remain an EVIDENCE-FREE, ACDS mental patient, loy-dodo. !!
Loydo, first, all four of them (Houston, Dallas, Grapevine Dam, and Oklahoma City) have in fact become very slightly LESS variable over time, although the change in each case is quite small and not statistically significant. For example, the standard deviation of the first half of the Dallas daily record is 9.24, and the sd of the last half of the record is 9.03.
Next, I’ve seen NO scientific explanation as to why a gradual warming of the planet should cause greater variation in temperature.
For fun, I took a look at the CET data. First half SD, 4.90. Last half SD, 4.64.
From my point of view, the claim that “global warming” leads to greater temperature variation was nothing more than an attempt to paper over the fact that the predictions of drowned cities and the end of arctic ice were cratering. As a result, I pay that claim no mind.
So if you have evidence that the gradual warming that we’ve seen over the last couple hundred years is leading to greater temperature variation … now would the time to break it out.
w.
PS—Your allegation that I am pretending not to know that “the prediction is more about variation” is sleazy, underhanded, and vile … which is a reflection of YOU, not me. I don’t “make out I don’t know” things. You and your friends might lie in that manner about what you know.
I don’t, and I don’t appreciate your nasty accusation.
Us kids were raised in part under what was called “The Captain’s Code”. My great-grandfather was a Louisiana river and ocean-going boat captain, called “The Captain” with capital letters and all by everyone including his children. My grandmother was The Captain’s Daughter, and when she said “I wonder what The Captain would think of that”, we knew we were in trouble. One part of The Captain’s Code was:
If there is a man who can call you a liar, kill him.
If you are one, kill yourself.
There is no room for either of you.
Now, The Captain was born in 1848, a much rougher time … so despite my grandmother inculcating all of the Captain’s Code in us kids’ heads, and despite her treating lying as a mortal sin, I’ve never killed a man who called me a liar. However, I’ve done my best to live by that maxim, and I don’t put up with your kind of ugly crap from anyone, man, woman, or child. Dial it back or I won’t discuss anything with you.
If you’re interested, here are some other parts of The Captain’s Code:
If you must ask yourself the question as to right or wrong, the answer is usually No.
It is better to live in a sixteen by sixteen foot cottage you own,than to live in a mansion owned by others.
When you go into a fight make sure the deck is clear behind you. You may need to step back.
If it is necessary to frame your diploma and hang it in the living room, there must be something wrong with your education.
Tread softly on slippery ground
Never write what you can’t rub out.
Thanks for your response. Re the allegation I apologise I didn’t intend it to be offensive.
“that getting warmer would make it colder?”
” just how much colder the world would have to get in order for Houston to never freeze again?”
“just how cold the globe would have to get for the US to stay warm all the time”
I meant it to be frank and blunt, but not offensive. Yes I know you were trying to be funny. Disputing the severity of AGW is one thing, but I suggest giving succour to ‘coolism’ is hardly the path to better understanding.
Back on the topic of temperature variation caused by polar jet waviness, recent research strongly disputes the idea:
“The well-publicised idea that Arctic warming is leading to a wavier jet stream just does not hold up to scrutiny.
“With the benefit of ten more years of data and model experiments, we find no evidence of long-term changes in waviness despite on-going Arctic warming.”
Professor Screen, an Associate Professor in Climate Science at Exeter.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200219152855.htm
Apology accepted, thank you.
However, you haven’t answered my request, viz:
Best regards,
w.
Ok I thought I did: “recent research strongly disputes the idea”. I totally accept your findings in regard to the cities you looked at. I haven’t looked myself so I have no reason to dispute them.
I had accepted the chain of causation viz: a a warmer pole > weaker gradient > wavier jet > more warm intrusions north and cold ones south. But as posted above, even that seems not to be the case, at least as far as a wavier jet goes.
There is NO EVIDENCE of any warming by human cause except UHI and minor land changes. But you know that, don’t you loy-dodo
You will NEVER understand that the world is starting to COOL, your deep-seated ACDS will not allow your feeble brain-washed mind to accept REALITY.
Giving “succour” to ACDS based “warmism” shows you have no understanding whatsoever.
Pretending that you have even the slightest understanding of anything to do with climate, is just plain WRONG.
You make it patently obvious that you are TOTALLY CLUELESS
You can’t even support the farce of warming by atmospheric CO2 with anything except empty , mindless rhetoric and blathering.
The Arctic is NOT warming except from the two major El Nino events
In Fact, between the 1979/80 major El Nino, the Arctic actually COOLED
And since 2000, after the effect of the 1998 major El Nino, ZERO trend until the 2015 El Nino/Big Blob event. ( gradually subsiding)
So yes, Arctic warming has not caused the jet stream waviness
In fact the wavy jet stream was evident in 1977 when NH was near its coldest since the 1940 peak
You do realise those are opposite causation statements, don’t you loy-dodo !
It’s weather variability and trying to sell it as climate variability is fraudulent
Willis I am always excited to read you essays!
Following some of the comments to this thread I bumped into the Danish Meteorolgical Institute DMI which had an article why we were seening a very cold period from mid jan to mid feb 2021 here in Denmark. Their explanation in my translation:
Up high in the atmosphere over Arctic in the layer called stratosphere, you find the polar vortex. If the polar vortex is weakened it can result in hugh changes in the weather down beyond, which results in a longer cold period.
The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere which in the polar regions starts in heights of 6-8 km and continues up until 50 km. In the stratosphere in the polar regions there is every winter created a vortex called the polar vortex. The polar vortex creates a permanent wind system where strong winds are blowing typical from west to east in a approximate circular way around the north pole.
blob:https://wattsupwiththat.com/89a65f38-f082-4d82-b536-720384ca5afb
A strong (normal) arctic polar vortex to left and a suddenly stratospheric warming to the right.
When the polar vortex weakens, the strong winds in the height decreases and the stratosphere is warmed up. Sometimes the wind in the height can even change it’s direction and start to blow from east to west and in combination we see a huge warming of the stratosphere – up till 60C in a few days. This effect is called the suddenly stratospheric warming (SSW), and in a few weeks this can create dramatically weather changes over the nordic countries.
The weakening of the polar vortex is however not clearly understood.
The change of the wind directions and the following strong warming have impact on the lower laying jet streams and SSW sometimes creates a stationary high pressure north to east of Denmark and ice cold air will cover an area of a huge part of the northern Europe”.
Although the strong La Nina could have impact on the SSW, I do speculate if what is really happening here is a effect of the electromagnetic effect from the Sun – an effect IPPC now consider to take into account – an effect that could totally change our view of the energy balance of the Earth and may show that the Sun is the actual regulator of the climate on Earth.
kind regards
SteenR
“When the polar vortex weakens, the strong winds in the height decreases and the stratosphere is warmed up.” It should also turn pink, but it does not for reasons not yet researched 🙂
BTW, your link does not work.
The imbedded pictures was in the up load process changed to the mysterious link
I will just try to add them once more then
They can be found at http://www.dmi.dk
Water behaving badly, love that one! Here in western PA we got up to freezing yesterday and everything was drippydrippy. Now, at 15F, all that water is behaving badly by icing over roads and bridges and sidewalks and stairs. Bad water, no biscuit!
We all know windmills are an effective weapon in the fight against global warming. It’s just Texan’s being Texan’s went too big on the wind power thing. Wind was pulling 40% of load the day before the big freeze..
It doesn’t sound like windmills were very effective in Texas. If they went too big on wind power, shouldn’t it be real hot right now? I guess CAGW doesn’t live within the confines of mathematical logic.
it was supposed to be a joke. more wind power,less co2, less warming, but texas over did it resulting in big freeze
Wind and solar make up about 25 percent of Texas electricty production.
At the time of the cold front hitting Texas, the windmills were providing about 43 percent of the electricity consumed, so we have to assume that the Texas grid was producing at less than the maximum possible.
And, I assume that windmill electrons were given priority over electrons from other generation facilities, as part of the virtue signalling deal to promote wind and solar, and that is why windmills were providing 43 percent of the electricity being used at the time.
That’s my guess.
Heard on a BBC news report about Texas today: “If there’s one thing the last few days prove, it’s that the US must act on climate change”.
We already outlawed 100 watt incandescent light bulbs. What more could the BBC want?
Pity the poor climate researcher, toiling tirelessly to come up with new climate concepts such as a “wavier polar vortex”, showing that it does in fact exist, and is “worsened by climate change” aka “global warming” to climatesplain™ the weather – I mean “climate events. Think of what a difficult enough time they have of it, without us sitting here, continually mocking them, and taking potshots at them. We should be ashamed.
Hardly a “new” concept !
“It’s funny how after just a few days, my memory of what I thought I’d heard on the weather report was so different from what actually happened.”
=======
The power of adjustments (spin).
Willis, I sit between Houston and Dallas, and I can tell you, you are correct. No global warming here, but I’d sure like some right now. I moved away from Kansas in 1974, but it followed me down here this month. I want it to go back!
P.S. I can tell you aren’t a “climate scientist,” you look at real observations.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cascend-data-shows-wind-power-was-chief-culprit-texas-grid-collapse
(^_^) … “PS—Misunderstandings are rife on the web. So when you comment, PLEASE quote the exact worlds you are referring to, so we can all understand who and what you’re discussing.”
The word, “worlds”, is intentional, right? If not, and it’s a typo, it shouldn’t be a typo — it’s right on, because some people are not on THIS world.
Headline on fake news.
“<b>Texas Crisis Exposes a Vulnerability to Climate Change</b>”
It was snow and low temperatures you idiots!
Yes, but due to rampant ACDS, any variability in the WEATHER anywhere is now part of “climate change” and means that mum, or dad, can no longer drive the kids to school in the SUV. !
I think the sombrero analogy is pretty good guess for the “waviness” of the jet stream, but the circularity is problematic, as things don’t always “circle back” per se, if I may.
Now, my frito theory doesn’t have this problem….
A sombrero after a hard night on the town ! :-p
I love Willis’s articles
Thanks for the kind words, Richard. I do my best to write in a way that can be understood by what I call the “interested lay-person”, someone who wants to understand more about a subject but doesn’t have three degrees in the topic.
My best to you, it’s comments like yours that keep me inspired.
w.