Reposted from The Cliff Mass Weather Blog
During the past week, the Pacific Northwest experienced the most severe heat event of the past century.
All-time high-temperature records were broken throughout the region, often by large margins. Many in the media, several local and national politicians, and some activist environmental scientists have claimed that this event was “driven by” or predominantly forced by human-inspired global warming (usually referred to as “climate change”).But such global warming claims are not supported by the facts and our best scientific understanding.
Truth and Rigorous Science About Climate Change is Necessary for Wise Decisions
In this blog, I will use observations, modeling, climatological data, and the peer-reviewed scientific literature to demonstrate that human-caused global warming played a very small role in the extreme heat event that we just experienced here in the Pacific Northwest.I will describe the origins of a meteorological black swan eventand how the atmosphere is capable of attaining extreme, unusual conditions without any aid from our species.As you read this, consider that I have actively pursued research on Northwest heatwaves, published several papers in the peer-reviewed literature on this specific topic, and have run both weather prediction and climate models that simulate such events. This subject is in my wheelhouse.
I also discuss the seriousness of misinformation. You and others can not make wise decisions when the information provided to you is not based on truth and science.
This is going to be an extended, detailed blog, a necessity if you are going to truly understand the science and the situation. Superficial, hand-waving arguments will not allow you to comprehend the truth, particularly when so many “facts” communicated in the media and among activists are inconsistent with the best science.
The Event
The maximum temperatures during the heatwave were as high as 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Seattle had a high of 108F, 35F above the normal high of 73F. Quilluyte on the Washington Coast zoomed to 109F compared to a normal high of 65 (44F above normal). Throughout the region, all-time temperature records were broken, representing the hottest day on record at many locations.
The map below shows where the all-time temperature records were broken, mainly west of the Cascade crest.
These high-temperature records occurred in late June, which is atypically early in the summer, with previous high-temperature records occurring roughly a month later when the Pacific Northwest climatologically is at its maximum warmth.
All-Time Records for High Temperatures Broken In WA/OR (red dots)
The Global Warming Background
The Pacific Northwest is warming and human emission of greenhouse gases is probably the origin of much of it.
To illustrate, the figure below shows the annual average high temperatures for Washington State from 1900 through 2020. About 1.5 F of warming over 120 years. The summer warming is nearly the same.
Let us assume that ALL of this warming is caused by mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions, although some might argue with that assumption. The warming during the past several decades is consistent with human causation, and climate modeling supports this contention.
So if greenhouse gas warming over Washington State is 1-2F, how can greenhouse gases cause a huge heatwave that is ten to twenty times greater? A very good question. Such a ten-times amplification of the global warming signal would require powerful positive feedbacks, which I will demonstrate below are simply not evident. A global warming origin of increased temperature extremes would also be evident in long-term trends of extreme temperatures, but such trends do not exist.But before we get into such things, you must understand the origins of the extraordinarily high temperatures observed earlier last week.
What Caused the Northwest Heat Wave?
A number of factors came together simultaneously to produce the extreme high temperatures over the Northwest observed last week.
The key factor in this and previous regional heatwaves is the development of an unusually strong and persistent area of high pressure over the Northwest. Such high-pressure areas are also called ridges and often extend vertically through great depth (10-30 thousand feet).
The figure below illustrates what the ridge looked like at 11 AM last Sunday around 18,000 feet above the surface (500 hPa pressure). At this level, the ridge was the most intense ever observed over the region (will prove that later).
Map A
High-pressure areas/ridges are associated with warm temperatures during the summer. First, high-pressure areas possess strong sinking, and sinking causes powerful warming as air is compressed as it descends to the higher pressure that exists at low levels (pressure decreases with height). Your air pump, very warm after inflating a tire, is a good illustration of this mechanism.
Ridges also possess southerly (from the south) flow on their western sides (apparent above), bringing subtropical warmth northwards.
But there is more!
The sinking air in high-pressure areas prevents clouds, thus allowing maximum solar heating (and the sun is near maximum strength now). And on the southern side of upper-level ridges there is often easterly (from the east) wind, which can move down the western slopes of terrain barriers, producing even MORE compressional heating as the air descends the slopes.
It is no accident that every major summer heatwave in our region is associated with a ridge of high pressure. Ridges are veritable heating machines during summer and sometimes are colloquially referred to as heat domes. The media loves this term.
The origin of the intense ridge of high pressure of last week is fascinating.
Our ridge appears to have originated in the far western Pacific, where a tropical disturbance rammed into the Pacific jet stream, causing high-amplitude waviness in the jet stream thousands of miles downstream to the east. The result was a strong ridge over the Northwest, with the waviness also producing a deep trough over the central Pacific (see upper-level map on Wednesday, June 23rd, 500 hPa pressure–about 18,000 ft).
Blue and purple indicate much lower than typical pressures (troughs or lows), red indicates above-average values (ridges or highs). You can see the waviness of the atmosphere over the north Pacific from Asia to North America.The Atmospheric Heat Supercharger
In our heatwave, there was a feature that supercharged the warming west of the Cascade crest and the coastal mountains (e.g., the Olympics): an approaching upper-atmospheric low-pressure area (or trough) that was west of northern California in Map A above.
Our high-pressure ridge (“heat dome”) had a potent supercharger. Picture courtesy of Nick Ares.
Between the offshore trough and the ridge over the Pacific Northwest, there were strong southeasterly (from the southeast) winds that pulled up air from the warm desert Southwest. This air subsequently descended the western slopes of the Cascades, where the air was further compressed and warmed.
You can see this “supercharger” in action on Monday afternoon in a forecast map valid for around 5000 ft (850 hPa pressure level). The colors indicate temperatures (darker red is warmer) and winds are also shown. You can think of the solid lines as representing the pressure at that level. Note the low offshore and the high to the northeast. The white arrow shows the warm southeasterly flow that descended the Cascade’s western slopes.
And the impact of the supercharger is seen in the super-warm air (brown colors, 104F, and more) found downstream of the Cascades at 5 PM on Monday, June 28.
Everything had to come together just “right” to give us this extreme event.
Record amplitude of a ridge/high pressure over our region, forced by a tropical disturbance in the western Pacific, that produced a downstream “wave train”. An environment that allowed the resulting wave to amplify. The ridge had to be in exactly the right position relative to our terrain. An upper-level trough had to develop in just the right location offshore and move in the optimal direction to cause strong southeasterly flow, fostering the supercharger noted above. We needed a period when the sun was very strong. And a summer stretch without smoke, which has a profound cooling effect.
The meteorological dice had to come up all sixes. And they did.
This concurrence of a number of factors coming together at one place and time was why the extreme heat occurred, with a very small assist from global warming, which added a few degrees to an already extreme event.
It is important to note that the atmosphere comes up sixes regularly, but not necessarily in the same place. The atmosphere is churning with all kinds of variability inherent in the physics of the atmosphere (also called natural variability).
To illustrate this to you, below is a world map of the temperature anomalies (difference from normal) just above the surface (about 800 m in elevation) on Tuesday, June 29th. You can see our extreme heatwave (red colors),\ centered over the northwest corner of Washington. But there are other large temperature anomalies scattered around the world, both warm and cold. Those are overwhelming NOT the result of global warming, but of natural variability. I could show you a similar map for a date, in say, 1940. It would look the same (I checked).
Extreme temperatures happen all the time in a somewhat random fashion. They just don’t happen where YOU are located very frequently, because so many random mechanisms must come together at the same time to do so.
Natural Variability or Global Warming? Dealing with Unsupported Claims
Since global warming is much smaller than the magnitude of the heatwave temperature extremes observed last week in the Northwest, those trying to ascribe the extreme temperatures to global warming must prove that global warming somehow amplifies natural variability.
For example, some have suggested that the key feature of last week’s heatwave– the extreme amplitude ridge of high pressure aloft– had origins in global warming. Others have suggested that global warming dries the soils, resulting in less evaporative cooling and warmer temperatures, thus explaining the extremes.
We will evaluate the plausibility of these various mechanisms for amplifying global warming and will show that they can not explain what happened last week.
Does Global Warming “Drought” and Dry Soils Explain the Heatwave?
One hypothesis starts with global warming causing drought and dry soils over our region. Then they claim that such dry soils warm the air (less evaporative cooling) enough to explain the high temperatures. Others suggest that the drought increases high pressure as well.
For reference, the NOAA Drought Monitor graphic for June 22nd shows normal or just slightly dry conditions west of the Cascade crest (where the extreme records were broken), but “drought” conditions over the normally dry region of eastern Washington.
The claims that the critical extreme ridge of high pressure was caused by dry conditions east of the Cascade crest are problematic for many reasons, including the fact that the origin of the high pressure can be traced to a large-scale amplification of the wave pattern over the entire North Pacific. Similarly, the claims that dry conditions east of the Cascades were significant in creating the extreme heatwave west of the Cascade crest are also weak. Let me prove this to you.
Model forecasts were stunningly good for this event. Even almost a week out, model simulations correctly predicted the development of an extreme high-pressure area over the Northwest and very high surface temperatures. Modelers like myself can “play god” with such excellent simulations, in this case, by making the soil much moister and seeing what happens. Would the heatwave go away with the absence of drought and under moister soil moisture conditions? You are about to find out.
Senior UW graduate student Robert Conrick re-ran the UW WRF weather forecasting model and tripled the soil moisture everywhere. He turned the region into a veritable swamp! And what do you think happened to the ridge of high pressure and the heat dome? Did it disappear? Did the heatwave go away?
The answer: virtually nothing happened to the intense high-pressure area. The heat dome was essentially unchanged. Surface temperatures over BC and western WA hardly changed.
The figure below shows the height of the ridge at 500 hPa pressure (you can think of this as the pressure at around 18,000 ft. The left side uses the actual soil moisture last week, the right side shows the same thing with TRIPLE the soil moisture. Virtually the same heights or pressures.
What about temperatures at the surface? Even with “biblical” moistening of the soil over the entire domain, temperatures over western Washington and British Columbia, where the heatwave was most severe, hardly changed, cooling by about 1 degrees C (about 2F) or less.
The theory of an unusually dry surface produced by global warming “drought” causing the high pressure “heat dome” or greatly warming low-level temperatures west of the Cascade crest appears unfounded.
This makes physical sense for a number of reasons. For example, the lush western side of the Northwest remained relatively moist into the summer. June’s rainfall was well above normal over most of the region west of the Cascade crest. As noted in my earlier blog, the trajectories of the air reaching the surface west of the Cascade crest did not come from the surface over eastern Washington or Oregon but subsided (sank) rapidly from aloft.
But there is something else that essentially puts the silver stake into the heart of the unfounded global warming “drought” theory of this event.
Specifically, there is no observed trend towards “drought” over the Pacific Northwest as demanded by the proposed global warming origin of this event.
Below is the observed annual precipitation over Washington State since 1900. Our region is NOT getting drier. If anything precipitation has increased a slight amount.
And is spring drought increasing in frequency as suggested by those pushing the global warming hypothesis? The answer is no. Below is a long-period plot of the Palmer Drought Index, which considers BOTH temperature and precipitation. No apparent long-term trend in spring drought…and notice how much worse it was during the 1930s and early 1940s.
So not only does the global warming drought hypothesis for the heatwave fail on a physical basis, but there is no trend in drought, which is a requirement if global warming was the explanation.
Does Global Warming Produce Stronger Ridges of High Pressure?
Another claim, provided by Professor Michael Mann of Penn. State and published in the New York Times is that global warming produces a weakened, “lazy” jet stream that forces more wave-like undulations and thus more ridging. This hypothesis has been thoroughly debunked in a number of papers in the peer-reviewed literature (see this article for an example or my blog). But I need not cite others, since I and my students have investigated this very issue in research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and published the research in the peer-reviewed literature.
For example, Matt Brewer and I looked at global climate models driven by rapidly increasing greenhouse gases and found that high-pressure areas like that seen last week will WEAKEN under global warming. Just the opposite of what Professor Mann was suggesting.
And last week I examined the frequency of high-amplitude ridging over our region from 1948 to today using NOAA reanalysis gridded data. I found no trend in the extreme highs aloft.
As further confirmation, Dr. Joe Zagrodnik of Washington State University examined the radiosonde sounding data (balloon-launched weather stations) at Quillaytate on the Washington coast and found no upward trend in the maximum heights (that is big ridges of high pressure) at 500 hPa (around 18,000 ft) at that location.
Dr. Zagrodnk also did not find any trend in extreme high temperatures in the lower troposphere (around 5000 ft).
Bottom line: none of the claims that global warming increases ridging (high pressure) over time are supported by data or modeling. Unfortunately, Dr. Mann and others continue to push this unfactual narrative.
Perhaps, The Most Compelling Evidence of All
If global warming was producing extreme heatwaves in our region, such as the event last week, there would be a long-term trend towards more extreme high temperatures. A single event does not reflect climate, only a trend or changes in long-term average do.
Well-known climatologist (and the official Alabama State climatologist) Dr. John Christy has run the numbers to determine if there are trends in record-breaking extreme temperatures in Washington State or Oregon.
As shown below, there IS NO INCREASING TREND for more record high temperatures over our region during the past century. In fact, the past decade (2011-2020) had no all-time records. I suspect many of you are surprised at this, but it is true.
Total number of stations with temperatures about 99F in our region? Also no trend
These results are consistent with what others have found. For example, the U.S. National Climate Assessment found the warmest day of the year over the Northwest actually COOLED between a historic (1901-1960) and a contemporary period (1986-2016).
I had a conversation about these findings with Dr. Nick Bond, Washington State Climatologist. He told me he was not surprised, and that he and Associate State Climatologist Karin Bumbaco found similar results, published in a peer-reviewed paper.
You may ask why there is little or no upward trend in record high temperatures even though the region and planet are warming.
There are a number of possibilities. For example, natural variability may be so dominant that a small amount of global warming is hard to notice. Or there may be climate feedbacks that work against extremes in a warming world….at least in our area. I have been researching one of these feedbacks: the tendency of heat-wave producing easterly flow to weaken under global warming and describe it below. And I can think of several more.
Still not convinced? Read on.High Resolution, State-of-Science Regional Climate Models Do Not Suggest A Global Warming Origin of the Extreme Heat
One of my major research projects (with Professor Eric Salathe of UW Bothel and supported by Amazon) has been to run high-resolution climate simulations driven by the most realistic global climate models. And the results are very relevant for this discussion.
Below is a graphic from this work showing the extreme high temperature each year at Seattle Tacoma Airport by an ensemble of 12 regional climate simulations (12-km grid spacing—VERY high resolution for climate work) driven by a highly aggressive (and unrealistic) increase of greenhouse gas emissions (RCP 8.5). These simulations started in 1970 and each forecast is shown by a different color. The green line is the mean of the regional forecasts and the observed highs are shown by black dots. I have indicated SeaTac’s high temperatures this year (108F, 42C) by the blue line.
You will notice two important features of these regional climate projections.
First, and of great importance, there is little upward trend in the extreme high temperatures.
Second, the most extreme temperatures of the ensembles over the entire period climbed to about 42C (108F). To do so, required rare, but possible, combinations of several factors. Improbable, but possible. You might also notice that the climate model was typically about 1-2C to warm. I believe that reflects the inability of even my very high-resolution simulations to properly simulate the effects of a narrow, improperly resolved cold Puget Sound.
Could Global Warming REDUCE Heat Waves West of the Cascade Crest?
Most people assume that global warming can only increase our high temperatures, but it can do the opposite as well. The Northwest’s mountains and nearby cold water paradoxically might reduce heatwaves over the populated areas west of the Cascade crest under global warming.
Global warming preferentially warms the interior of western North America compared to the Pacific coast (land warms up much more quickly than the Pacific Ocean). The heating results in enhanced pressure falls over the interior (warm air is less dense than cold air), which strengthens cool, onshore flow and lessens warm easterly (offshore) flow. Bad for heatwaves!
All the great heatwaves west of the Cascade crest occurred under strong easterly flow. Both global and regional climate models have shown that global warming lessens heatwave-producing easterly flow. To illustrate this, consider the figure produced by the research done by my group with Dr. Eric Salathe of UW Bothell. This plot shows the maximum easterly flow each year simulated by an ensemble (many forecasts) of high-resolution regional climate models. Importantly, the mean strength of the strong easterly flow (black line) goes DOWN under global warming, working against the kind of heatwave we had last week.
The Evidence is Overwhelming
As I described above, the natural origins of the “black swan” heatwave we experienced last week can be demonstrated in a number of independent ways, from examining the origins and frequency of the ingredients (such as the high-amplitude ridge of high pressure), considering the statistics of warm temperatures (the lack of trend in extreme high-temperature days), and through high-resolution climate modeling.
The evidence for a predominantly natural origin of the high temperatures records of last week is compelling, with global warming marginally increasing the peak temperatures by perhaps a few degrees. Without global warming, we still would have experienced the most severe heatwave of the past century.
Politicization and Miscommunication of Science
The inaccurate information being distributed about the origins of this heatwave is very disturbing.
Some of this is being done out of ignorance or laziness, but a few individuals are deceiving the public deliberately. Science journalism is only a shadow of what it was decades past, and a number of scientists now see social activism as more important than the determination and communication of truth.
Our nation has made costly mistakes when the truth was twisted for political reasons, such as for the Iraq war, when our nation spent trillions of dollars and initiated a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people based on misinformation about non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
We are now making similar mistakes with global warming, with politically inspired misinformation slowing realistic and life-saving steps, such as thinning our forests and restoring natural fire, or proceeding rapidly with nuclear energy. Hyping global warming puts unrealistic and unnecessary fear into the hearts of our fellow citizens. Unconscionable. Global warming is an issue we can deal with, but only if truthful, factual, and science-based information is provided to decision-makers and the nation’s citizens.
I have spent my life trying to understand the weather and climate of our region and it is so frustrating that the media (e.g., KNKX public radio, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Stranger) and local politicians (such as our governor) have placed such a low priority on providing accurate information regarding climate change and other environmental challenges.
They have put political agendas ahead of truth and we are all the worst for it.
Some of the records are suspicious. Downtown Seattle only hit 104 F. SeaTac was recorded as a lot hotter.
I thought the same, but in today’s weather world a record is almost never questioned.
Record highs are never questioned.
I heard there was a record high of 220F in Death Valley. All the water boiled away. Don’t question it!
(I bet if I posted that on social media, people would believe it)
This is the ‘peak detector’ effect—once alive in the public, only the highest number is remembered; anything less than the peak is subconsciously discarded, regardless of technical merit.
UHI
Similar “records” in recent years in both France and Germany were even validiated by the respective national weather services, despite defective weather stations being inspected and defects ignored.
Downtown Seattle is on Puget Sound. SeaTac airport is a distance away from the Sound and exposed to warm easterly winds. The microclimate effects are real around here. After 40+ years here it still amazes me.
Never mind what science has to say, this is all about the narrative. And the Waffen BBC even provides it in pidgin…
Dis temperature break one 84-year-old record for Canada. One “heat dome” of high pressure park over di region don set new records for many oda areas.
Di US and Canada don both warned citizens of “dangerous” heat levels wey fit last all week.
Experts say climate change dey expected to increase di frequency of extreme weather events, like heatwaves.
Di high pressure zone dey huge, from California right up to Canada Arctic territories.
And e dey stretch inland through Idaho.
Pipo don dey run on air-conditioners and fans. Some don also set up cooling shelters for some bars and restaurants, as swimming pools dey too hot to function.
And my favourite…
For im analysis wit BBC, Environmental analyst, Roger Harrabin say: “We no fit tok for certain say na emission from industrial society cause dis brutal heatwave. “But na exactly dis kain extreme weather scientists don warn us of, as di CO2 levels continue to rise.”
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/world-57640901
Magic.
wot di fok maan ??
”84-year-old record for Canada”
So somehow a part of Canada got very hot 84 years ago and it was not because of CO2.
Robert: “This time it’s different”
Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No.
The bought & paid for left wing media says Yes and unfortunately that’s what counts.
All the charts, graphs, pictures of black swans & rolling dice plus snappy quotes from Mark Twain aren’t going to make an appearance on the pages of National Geographic, Scientific American or the nightly news with Norah O’Donnel.
“Global Warming The Cause”
Is there a more thoroughly beaten strawman than this? Maybe the wildfire version. Cite one source that says this.
Heat Waves “Almost Certainly” Due to Global Warming
From your man James “the end is nigh” Hansen.
“A new study examining six decades of global temperature data concludes that a sharp increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers can only be the result of human-caused global warming.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/120803-global-warming-hansen-nasa-heat-waves-science
From the same article:
“It’s very dangerous, in my view, to phrase your conclusion in this way … To say in absolute terms that this weather event was very, very unlikely to occur if we hadn’t caused global warming is very difficult to substantiate with the science,” said Myles Allen, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford in the U.K.
Settled science.
The statements about human caused warming are not supported by measurement. The patterned global temperature rise is not matched by a similar pattern of fossil fuel use by humans.
As a Meteorologist I immediately knew this was predominantly a natural freak event with only minor AGW influence. However when I stated this publicly I got the usual climate denier accusations. I tried to explain most of what Cliff Mass stated but it falls on deaf ears even with fellow Mets. People who should know better have lost the ability to think freely and rationally. Instead they defer to ‘experts’.
It is strange days we live in when meteorologists are not considered weather or climate experts.
If we look at the last 200 Ma the recent 3.5 are the coldest. So what AGW are we talking about ? We live in an Ice Age.
Even during the last 15,000 years ( Holocene ) temperature has been higher when trees could grow much higher up the mountain and much closer to the poles.
Thx for the comprehensive explanation !
What is always left out of these discussions is that during the same time, the Rocky Mtn. West was unusually cold, especially WY-CO-NM-TX. Without all the fancy isobar graphs, the jet stream kept the high in place over OR-WA while dipping far south toward the US-Mexico border, pulling arctic air over the middle of the continent.
No matter how long and detailed this analysis is–as long as Governor Jay Inslee’s statement remains unchanged, what’s the point? We have to change that governor’s misinformed (or conspiratorial) mind before this societal misdirection is corrected.
I guess there might be hope that the un-election of Inslee will result, but I don’t see that happening; people seem to like crises, it generates the feeling that their lives occur during the most important 100 years of the entirety of human history. That someone points out with detailed science that the heat wave was a natural event is dismissed after 2 paragraphs with a yawn; ‘b-o-r-i-n-g’.
While the statement of credentials supporting the analysis to some of us validates the work, remember that Michael Mann makes exactly the same claims about it being in his wheelhouse too–all while pointing in exactly the opposite direction; how are the Jay Inslee’s to choose? I don’t think Jay is going to understand much of this article. One statement of ‘D-O-O-M!!’ from Mann and this Mass of papers just gets thrown to the wind. And both Mann and Inslee know it; it gets Mann more money, and Inslee inaugurations.
Ah, academics. They’ve become like economists–stack them all up end-to-end and they still point every which way. Not a criticism of something we can fix, just an observation of something we can’t.
Most people just like to be slaves and sheep. Slavery was never abolished it just changed its appearance.
Form 1040 tells you exactly that.
https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsInstructions.html?value=1040&criteria=formNumber&submitSearch=Find
Someone should show Gov. Inslee the NASA paper entitled “Satellite Detects Human Contribution To Atmospheric CO2.” The mapping in this paper shows that the state he governs contributes almost no CO2 to the atmosphere and what little it does contribute does not occur in areas of increased human activity.
“Let us assume that ALL of this warming is caused by mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions, although some might argue with that assumption. The warming during the past several decades is consistent with human causation, and climate modeling supports this contention. ”
Ass + u + me …
To make matters worse, a train that catches fire and sets fire to a small town (Lytton) after having the highest temperature records 3 days in a row happens. And the fire gets blamed on ‘climate change’ even though I see it as dry there most every year with the same high winds being funnelled through the Fraser Canyon. Talk about perfect 6’s. That could have happened almost any year I lived there for 20 years, and have been surprised that all these years when things inevitably dry up to to near zero moisture content, that Lytton didn’t burn down sooner.
Of course, this just drives the narrative that humans caused it. Well yes, sort of, but it was a human caused train on fire that appears to have caused that tragedy. No matter if there had just been 3 record setting temps in a row topping out at 49.6 C (121.1 F) without a source of ignition, that fire never would have happened, like so many years the town didn’t burn down when there was weeks of extreme hot, dry and windy weather, which is the norm in summer.
Likely not caused by a train. It’s looking now like it may well have been arson with another church being burned resulting in the town being destroyed.
No churches on the south side of Lytton down by the rail tracks, which is where the fire started according to dozens of eye witnesses that barely escaped with their life, including some of my friends. But 3 churches have been burnt (arson) in Lytton going back to the 19th century. Eye witnesses and video of train on fire, and the train kept going 20 miles south to Boston Bar. Still don’t know if my cabin and 10 acres right on the Fraser River 10 miles south of Lytton is still standing. This news item from July 9th…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/transportation-safety-board-investigates-possibility-that-a-train-sparked-fire-in-lytton-1.6097390
Not at all compelling. This IS climate change.
See also heatwaves in June/July in E Europe, Russia, Siberia, New Zealand and Finland/Lapland.
Nordic countries endure heatwave as Lapland records hottest day since 1914 | Environment | The Guardian
Your own link says the hottest day in Lapland occurred in 1914. Leave it up to you, griffter, to post something that refutes your own (idiotic) claim. You’re apparently too stupid to realize it.
Eastern Europe is the same, Moscow hasn’t been this hot since 1901.
This years January temperatures were in the top 15 coldest for the country.
In 2019 Muscovites endured the coldest August for 150 years.
They also had to cope with the harshest winter for 70 years in 2012, with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the seasonal norm all over Russia.
Global warming Grifter?
Can’t recall a time I have slept with a blanket on the eve of Independence Day here in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic. Blissful springtime weather in July is unheard of for two reasons:
1) we typically are in the 90’s late May though August with 100 degree heat waves throughout said period.
2) Our blissful mild weather, so far, is UNHEARD of because the Propaganda Press in the Mid-Atlantic refuse to comment on why it is not pushing 100 degrees around the Nations Capitol the Hot Air center of the Planet.
Dr. Mass discussed the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific ocean region in some detail, that part you failed to understand that it was a WEATHER phenomenon that came together to generate the very hot week.
It has little to do with global warming itself since the factors Dr. Mass described was more than enough on its own to create the heatwave, which he pointed out in detail.
There have been huge heatwaves during global cooling times too, I know since I have lived through the 1970-71 awesome heatwaves and this recent one in the same community in Eastern Washington, where it reached 117 F.
Climate change isn’t needed to make such heat waves, your are too invested in your climate change nonsense to understand it.
“…hottest day since 1914…”
So, all this time it was colder than 1914? Huh.
griff
You seem to have missed BobM’s question earlier.
Would you prefer living in 1700 to 1775 when CO2 was so benign, or this terrible time of “dangerous” CO2, 1950-2025
Because heatwaves in the Summer have never occurred before, have they?
Don’t be a wally Griff.
I’m curious how much this guy gets paid and by whom to come here and make the climate catastrophists look like morons.
Boston, Massachusetts set a record “low high” of 60 degrees on July 4th. The old record was set in…wait for it…1914!!!! Can you say “highly anomalous (but complimentary and temporary) amplitude”?!?!?!?!
Global temperature is not the only factor from climate change that affected this heatwave. (Most extreme heatwaves are actually having their peak temperatures boosted less by global warming than nighttime low temperatures and everyday average temperatures are.) Another factor is the northward shift in the average position (for the time of year) of the northern polar front jet stream. This is probably along the lines of a mere hundred milles, but that increases the ability of central and southern British Columbia to get heatwaves that were previously generally restricted to the south of there. (I expect such extreme heatwaves in British Columbia to continue to be rare despite their frequency being increased by this shift in the average position of the northern polar front jet stream, with this frquency increasing something like from a couple times per millennium to about once per century.) Something notable here: Washington State had its alltime record high temperature boosted by 1 degree F by this heatwave and Oregon’s alltime record high from 1898 was not exceeded.
If you don’t know how much the polar front jet stream has drifted, how do you know that it has drifted?
Once you can find actual evidence of this drifting, please provide evidence that this alleged drifting was caused by climate change and is not within the bounds of normal variation.
It is my personal opinion that some combination of natural and anthropogenic climate change processes has baked at least two degrees of warming above pre-industrial by the year 2100 into the earth’s climate system. So, how did I arrive at this conclusion?
A long-standing principle of debate is that the more assumptions you have to make to prove your argument, the weaker is your argument. Today’s computerized climate prediction models contain hundreds of assumptions large and small concerning the physics of how the earth’s climate system actually operates.
For purposes of argument, I replace those many assumptions with just one very large and comprehensive maxi assumption. ‘The 1850-2019 HADCRUT4 Global Mean Temperature record includes the combined effects of all natural and anthropogenic climate change processes as these have evolved through time over the past one-hundred seventy years. Similar processes will operate from 2020 through 2100.’
The illustration presented below, dated April 15th 2020, contains a single-page graphical analysis for predicting where global mean temperature, as measured by HADCRUT4, will likely end up by the year 2100.
Beta Blocker’s Year 2100 GMT Prediction Envelope
URL: 
Figure 1 contains the pattern analysis used as the basis of my year 2100 prediction envelope. Figure 2 describes the prediction envelope in greater detail, as follows:
+ 2.7 C Scenario: The 1975-2019 trend line of +0.19 C/decade continues uninterrupted from 2020 to 2100. (Less likely to occur, IMHO)
+ 2.0 C Scenario: The past pattern of GMT trends which occurred between 1850 and 2019 remains fully operative. (More likely to occur, IMHO)
+ 1.3 C Scenario: The linearized long term trend of +0.05 C/decade for the period of 1850-2019 dominates through 2100. (Less likely to occur, IMHO)
+ 0.6 C Scenario: A moderate GMT cooling trend of -0.06 C/decade starting in 2020 continues past 2050 and dominates through the year 2100 and beyond. (Less likely to occur, IMHO.)
In my opinion, the ‘more likely’ GMT pathway between 2020 and 2100 is the one most consistent with the historical pattern of warming, then cooling, then warming which occurred in an ever-upward stepwise progression between 1850 and 2019. In other words, it is the pattern which most closely resembles the HADCRUT4 pattern between 1850 and 2019.
As one who is a lukewarmer in the climate change temperature prediction debates, my bet is on the + 2.0 C scenario as the one most likely to occur. However, other outcomes certainly remain possible, even if I judge them to be less likely.
Here is the bottom line question as it concerns the value of today’s mainstream climate models:
For purposes of public policy decision making, do the computerized climate models with their vast complexity and their many physical assumptions, large and small, have any more useful predictive power than does my very simple single-page graphical analysis?
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Full Disclosure: I post as ‘Beta Blocker’ on Watts Up with That and on Climate Etc. I post as Betah Blocher on other climate change forums because most of these don’t allow ‘Beta Blocker’ as a user name. I’ve spent thirty-five years in nuclear construction and operations. The bulk of my occupational radiation exposure has come from beta/gamma sources, hence my internet handle is Beta Blocker.
“anthropogenic climate change processes”
Whaaa? You can’t just assume those exist, or at least not in any way that makes a difference. That isn’t how science works.
Bruce Cobb says: “anthropogenic climate change processes” …. Whaaa? You can’t just assume those exist, or at least not in any way that makes a difference. That isn’t how science works.’
I am free to postulate that anthropogenic climate change processes exist, just as you are free to postulate that they don’t. Can either of those two postulations be ‘unscientific’ — as opposed to being ‘scientific’ — according to someone’s personal opinion?
My postulation that such processes exist is a sub-element of my larger generalized assumption, which is that: ‘The 1850-2019 HADCRUT4 Global Mean Temperature record includes the combined effects of all natural and anthropogenic climate change processes as these have evolved through time over the past one-hundred seventy years. Similar processes will operate from 2020 through 2100.’
As my graphical analysis is formulated and constructed, no attempt is made to determine the relative magnitudes of the anthropogenic and the natural climate change processes. Any such division of magnitudes is subsumed and hidden within the larger general assumption.
Why is it being done this way? Because climate science has yet to deliver a firm conclusion as to what the relative magnitudes of the anthropogenic and the natural climate change processes actually are as these operate in the real world.
Now, you may choose to argue that the effect of anthropogenic climate change processes is negligible, or even that such processes don’t exist at all. You may also choose to argue that global mean temperature will be lower in the year 2100 than it is today.
By definition, both possibilities are covered in my graphical analysis. As are any number of other possibilities depending upon one’s personal opinions as to what actually happens inside the earth’s climate system.
As for myself, I’m of the opinion that the earth will see roughly a 2 C rise in GMT by the year 2100 — maybe more, maybe less — and when asked to defend that opinion, I offer
Beta Blocker’s Year 2100 GMT Prediction Envelope as the analytical reasoning which supports that opinion.
But you will be dead in 2100 so your prediction is meaningless. Unless your audience for your predictions are babies.
When I speak to babies, I say “goo-goo” and “daa-daa”. They like that.
Cliff earns his pay because he knows this stuff. Still, I thank him for putting reports such as this together and making them available in a manner non-meteorologists can follow. [To be clear, I question the all-in of the CO2 axiom; and the existential consequences.]
I live near Ellensburg, WA – one of the records (red dots) on the top map.
In recent years the KELN station seemed to read high, at high temperatures. This year my auto sensor and a home Oregon Scientific indoor/outdoor unit were reading almost the same as KELN. I’m 500 feet higher; more trees nearby.
All those words wasted, when all he needed to do was point to the worldwide temperature anomaly for June, which was slightly negative (0.01 deg C) compared to May.
In other words, due to a weather blip, the air got super heated in one tiny sliver of the world, while the world overall didn’t experience any increase at all.
If “global warming” is responsible, there wasn’t any global warming, so how can that be?
This guy may not be the typical whack job enviro-nazi, but he still believes that humans are causing the warming that’s been going on for the past 16 plus thousand years, approximately 15,950 years before any SUVs were being operated.
I have no doubts that human development / alteration of landscapes in many regions has affected the ways the climates of those regions used to function.
The big question that AGW boosters have to answer though, is –
are effects such as urban heat island anything to worry about except for the folk who live in those areas?
(considering that there are countless examples where temps in areas just beyond city boundaries always register a number of degrees cooler)
Quoting Mark Twain? Are you sure that’s wise?
Have you seen what’s happening to Steinbeck?
The seminal work To Kill A Mockingbird will no longer be taught at a secondary school in Scotland after teachers claimed the book promotes a “white saviour” narrative.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/07/06/white-saviour-narrative-cited-for-school-ban-on-to-kill-a-mockingbird/
Harper Lee?
Steinbeck will follow soon, if the cancel culture nazis get to read his novels. But, again, they might not get past the fist page.
White savior is correct. Black savior is deceptive. Gray savior is closer to the mark. Politically congruent (“=”) constructs fill in the missing links. Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), inequity, and exclusion breeds adversity.
White saviour narrative?
This from the same liberals who believe that blacks are incapable of running their own lives and need white liberals to tell them what to do every moment of the day?
Jay=Putz
Ironically, the Iraq war began with a regional climate change, was forced to a local change, sustained over nearly a decade, then ended with a pause during a period of reconstruction, which was followed by a high ridge and a confluence of events in Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Turkey, Libya, Syria, etc. (global climate change), accompanied by transnational [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform, which reached a peak and ended with another pause, hopefully more tolerant of a changing political climate. A veritable stadium wave with diverse first-order forcings.
From the article:
” For example, the U.S. National Climate Assessment found the warmest day of the year over the Northwest actually COOLED between a historic (1901-1960) and a contemporary period (1986-2016)”
As I’ve noted before, it is worth looking up the Pacific Northwest on Berkeley Earth where you can find the RATE of warming or otherwise.
See…
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/locations/47.42N-121.97W
… where you will find the following produced from DATA ( not models):
Mean RATE of temperature change(degrees C/century SINCE 1990):
Vancouver, BC -1.62 +/-.60
Seattle -1.27 +/-.67
Portland -1.62 +/- .60
British Columbia -.04 (+/-.32)
Washington state -.54 (+/-.41)
Oregon state -.33 (+/-.29)
Now it has been over 30 years since 1990 which ought to be enough time to see some evidence of an ACCELERATING CLIMATE EMERGENCY developing in the region.
Note: those Minus signs are NOT typos.
The sun? Summer? Just guessing.
The models “support this contention” because they are designed and tuned to do so. That in no way supports the hypothesis of AGW , it is a RESULT of choices and assumptions of the modellers in creating the model.
Models are “tuned” ( via poorly constrained parameters ) to produce no long term rise with only “natural forcings”. They are then tuned to be similar to the temperature record when CO2 and other factors are added back in.
Hansen et al 2005 clearly states that you can get pretty much any climate sensitivity you want out of a model by suitable choice of parameters.
The same models are NOT “consistent with” the early 20th c. warming. So we know already they do not reproduce the Earth’s climate and any “consistency” with human causation is falsified by looking at the entire record and not just recent decades.
Producing a general similarity to a monotonically rising variable is a trivial result. It is the ability to reproduce variations in both directions with the correct timing over the WHOLE RECORD which gives an indication of whether a model may be showing behaviour similar to the real climate system.
So when will Cliff be “canceled”? Surely this heresy can’t be allowed to stand?
and yet it WAS the cause of every record cold spell we have had in the CONUS in the last 10 years. Including Texas.
Northwest heat is only one part of the temperature anomaly story for the Americas as a whole:
https://youtu.be/LZLKfil2lz0
Here’s the full American anomaly map:
Here’s the full American anomaly map (with image)
Excellent article with data even Stokes possibly won’t try to spin in his occasionally useful but often pedantic way.
I must admit the false claims over this short lived localized heatwave are a little less egregious and less difficult to take than the gymnastics they were performing earlier this year trying to blame the historic cold snap in Texas on the apparently omnipotent molecule CO2.
I have never been so wrong about anyone in my life.
Wow
Northern hemisphere has been getting more sunlight since 1585 when perihelion last occurred before the austral summer solstice. In 12,000 years, the boreal summer solstice and perihelion will occur on the same day. That will be peak sunlight for the northern hemisphere and most noticeable at higher northern latitudes.
The climate is changing and always will providing Earth continues to orbit the sun.
From the article: “The Pacific Northwest is warming and human emission of greenhouse gases is probably the origin of much of it.”
There is no evidence that human-caused greenhouse gases are the origin of a one to two degree increase in temperatures.
You can say you believe CO2 is causing some warming, but you cannot say how much.
It warmed just as much from 1910 to 1940 as it has warmed from 1979 to the present, and the high temperatures were comparable, and in the case of the United States, the high temperatures of the 1930’s were as much as 0.5C warmer than today.
So in order to claim CO2 caused the current warming, you first have to explain why the reason for the 1910 to 1940 warming is no longer in effect, since even the IPCC says CO2 was a minor factor during that period of time.
The current warming could be just as natural as the 1910 to 1940 warming, and you can’t say it’s not, since you have no idea how much warmth CO2 adds to the atmosphere and you have no idea of the negative feedbacks that might come into play.
So you are making unsubstantiated assertions when you say with some confidence that Human-caused CO2 “probably” is the cause of one or two degrees of current warming. There’s no way you can know this with the information currently available.
And is that Washington State temperature chart from the raw (unmodified) data, or has it been adjusted?
I have noticed that our Climate Change Data Manipulators have taken to modifying even regional surface temperature charts, trying to turn them into Hockey Sticks, and when they get done, they always seem to have that little highpoint right at the end that puts the temperatures just above what they were in the past. They look a whole lot like the Washington State chart you supplied.
Raw or Bastardized?
Other than that, I thought your explanation of the circumstances around this high temperature event were right on the momey.
Just leave CO2 out of it, please.
I posted this fine post a few hours ago at a forum and the warmist/alarmist group are going crazy, while completely avoiding the content of Dr. Mass presentation totally.
HERE
It is hilarious!
I saw several articles yesterday that claimed the Northwest heatwave proves human-caused climate change/global warming is real and is here.
Cliff Mass just proved them wrong with this article.
People! I was there! I survived the Great Heatwave of 2021.
So did my cat, and my wife, and all my neighbors, and the deers, turkeys, squirrels, and other critters, and my garden, which is magnificent and burgeoning, possibly the best ever. I mean I’m harvesting tomatoes! In July! In Oregon! It’s a miracle!
Given all the hype, you’d think the buzzards would be circling all the carcasses lying in the burned-out vegetation, but it’s not like that at all. The warmth (it never got over 100°F at my house) was a little uncomfortable, but Ma Nature came through it in great shape.
I’d like to complain, play the Victim Card, but there’s nothing to complain about. We’re living the dream here. Sorry if your world is discombobulating, but the weather in mine is delightful.
The folly of denialism is now plain for everyone to see.
Yep-the folly of denying that natural variability trumps the magic molecule every time.
I say we sack all the climastrologists and rely on cutting edge machine learning-
Human activity influencing global rainfall, study finds (msn.com)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57729502 Roger Harrabin’s take on it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57742482 and the general BBC view 😒
“So if greenhouse gas warming over Washington State is 1-2F, how can greenhouse gases cause a huge heatwave that is ten to twenty times greater? “
This feels like a misleading question, and worse, an ineffective line of argument.
I live in a suburb north of NYC. The all-time high temperature is less than 100 degrees. In fact, the weather services tell me the all-time high for NYC is less than 100 degrees, whatever Spike Lee and my childhood memories tell me.
I’d bet 90%+ of the American population has never lived anywhere temperatures get more than a couple of degrees over 100.
Except in the Pacific Northwest. Those temperatures were shocking 108 degrees! One place hit 115 degrees!
More shocking, to me, were the previous records in those places. That place that hit 115 degrees last week had a previous record of 109 degrees. One place that hit 108 degrees had a previous record of 104.
Emphasize those numbers if you want to calm people down. Get them to understand that temperatures far above any other part of the country are uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, but do happen.
Because those temperatures don’t happen anywhere on the Atlantic coast. Without that context, people look at 115 degrees and think the end of the world is coming for them.
The media don’t seem to understand how much an outlier this was. Super extreme events aren’t caused by climate change. Climate change doesn’t cause nearly 40 deg deviation from normal. It’s as if Chicago hit 123F (normal 83F), Atlanta 130F (Normal 89F), Dallas Texas 136F (Normal 94F), or Pheonix 155F (Normal end of June high 110F). At Berkleyearth.org it was pointed out when PDX’s temps reached 112F on Sunday (Monday’s temperature was 117F) that this was the most severe heatwave ever recorded in North America, possibly the world, as measured by departure from normal temperatures. I’m thankful that in the rest of my lifetime or even in my grandchildren’s lifetime none of PDX’s temperatures will get within 10 deg F of that record. (In the 150+ of Portland’s records it hit 107 only 4 times. Once in 1942, 1965, and twice in 1981). Because of our proximity to the Pacific Ocean, even those temperatures are very hard to reach.
> It’s as if Chicago hit 123F (normal 83F), Atlanta 130F (Normal 89F), Dallas Texas 136F (Normal 94F), or Pheonix 155F (Normal end of June high 110F).
No, it’s not like that at all. It’s as if those cities exceeded their pre-warming record highs by a few degrees.
This was an unusual event for that area, maybe a little bit stronger than previous occurrences, but not unprecedented at all.
You don’t understand. I took the new record temperature and the normal high converted them to Kelvin and divided the normal into the new record and found that the new record was 1.0725 (7.25%) higher than the normal. I then took those cities’ normal high temperatures for the same date, converted them to Kelvin and applied the same ratio, and then converted the result back to F, thus comparing apples to apples. Our new all-time high temperature was 7.25% higher (based on degrees K) than our normal for the day. Our new record is 5.39% higher (based on degrees K) than our old record of 107F. Beating the old record by over 5% is no everyday occurrence. I won’t be around to collect but I believe that this record will stand for at least the next 200 years. All the global warming predicted (which the actual data says isn’t going to happen) would, over the next 100 years only bring the all-time max to 109F.
I re-did the calculations using Excel (see below) and I admit I was a degree high on my hand calculations but still it shows how extraordinary this heatwave was.
Science says yes: heatwave impossible without climate change
Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming
Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming – BBC News
“Science says yes: heatwave impossible without climate change”
Ridiculous, Griff. I’m assuming by “climate change” that you mean human-derived CO2 warming. Correct me if I’m wrong.
So, you are saying there were no heatwaves before humans started putting CO2 in the atmosphere?
Do you see how ridiculous that is?
UHI will almost certainly guarantee that heat waves will be worse each decade in urban areas.
Yes, you are right. In fact, the ‘global warming’ that people are feeling, and that we are mostly measuring, at least in urban areas, is due to the UHI. To the people that live in Manila, Bangkok or Calcutta, it is up to 10 degrees hotter in the city. And stays hotter and longer all night. This is mostly where the myth of global roasting/frying comes from. But at at best, urban areas are only a few percentage points of the entire planet if that, and are not representative of the entire globe.