From ClimateREALISM
A story published by John Deem of the Savannah Morning News (SMN) claims that a warmer than normal spring that is expected this year is “under climate change’s influence.” This is false. SMN is conflating short-term weather patterns with long-term climate change and an examination of real-world data does not support their conclusion.
The article comma titled ‘Ma Nature’ expected to nurture warm spring in Savannah under climate change’s influence, was published on the website of the newspaper on April 2nd 2024. The article makes this claim:
Spring is likely to be warmer than usual in Savannah and across Georgia this year, according to the latest long-term forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
That’s nothing new. Thanks to warming fueled primarily by heat-trapping pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, average spring temperatures have climbed considerably locally and over much of the Southeast over the past 50 years.
Although it is unclear in the article which long-term forecast from the Climate Prediction Center SMN is referencing, this Seasonal Temperature Outlook in Figure 1 below is the most likely candidate:
The key on Figure 1 shows colors that match different regions, for Savannah GA, the orange color relates to a “leaning above” 40 to 50% probability of a warmer than normal spring. That is hardly certain. Interestingly, the one-month outlook issued by the Climate Prediction Center shows equal chances for Georgia and much of the southeastern United States. (See figure below) Basically, that prediction is no better than a coin flip; it could be warmer, or it could be cooler. With such a lack of precision over the shorter term of one month, certainly a three-month forecast is not likely to be any better.
SMN is making their claim of a warmer spring driven by “climate change’s influence” based on a forecast with a high level of uncertainty.
A short-term change in weather patterns over a few months from year to year is not the same as long-term climate change. It is well established in the scientific community that at least 30 years of changing weather must be recorded in order for it to become a climate pattern. To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region. Three months in one spring season is woefully short of that requirement.
More than that, SMN failed to do any detailed analysis of historical temperatures. According to State Climate Summaries 2022 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperatures were actually far warmer in the past than they are today as seen in Figure 3:
The observed number of hot days have fallen in Georgia since the peak in the early 20th century. Looking at the written summary on temperatures, NOAA has this to say: “Temperatures in Georgia have risen by 0.8°F, about half of the warming for the contiguous United States, since the beginning of the 20th century.”
Clearly Georgia is falling behind when it comes to warmer temperatures. If in fact “climate change’s influence” was driving warmer temperatures as SMN claims, we would see it in the data but the exact opposite is true.
Finally, according to World Population Review, the city of Savannah has seen explosive population growth since the beginning of the 20th century. Clearly people seem to prefer the climate of Savannah with obviously little concern over climate change driven temperature.
SMN editors and writer John Deem clearly didn’t do their homework when it came to making a claims of “climate change’s influence” for this spring that according to forecast may or may not come to pass. It is just one more sad example of the media spinning a climate change narrative instead of paying attention to actual data and the relevant skill of a forecast.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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“Finally, according to World Population Review, the city of Savannah has seen explosive population growth since the beginning of the 20th century.”
And no doubt the city’s growth will increase the UHI there. I’m sure “they” will properly account for that…
Their prediction has been wrong for April where I live. March was above average but April has been cool. If I remember correctly, the media here said the last few Aprils were the coldest ever or near to the coldest ever.
We just had a nor’easter in New England- yesterday.
Story tip – About That Inevitable Transition to Electric Vehicles… – PJ Media
The article cites 50 years of warming:
“Thanks to warming fueled primarily by heat-trapping pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, average spring temperatures have climbed considerably locally and over much of the Southeast over the past 50 years.”
What pollutants are those? The same “carbon” emissions you make when you breathe?
The article doesn’t cite ANY DATA to prove that conjecture.
Moreover, that unsupported conjecture flies in the face of data:
HUMAN CO2 RATE OF INCREASE UP GREATLY. WARMING NOT.
Sure, lack of a citation a fair criticism, although it is general knowledge for most people that the American Southeast has gotten warmer over the past 50 years:
and this isn’t a peer reviewed research article, but a silly general interest weather piece in a local newspaper, so being a little bit lax on citation protocol is pretty excusable.
excusable? not at all
If I’m writing a news piece for my local paper and say something like “one and one, which equal two when added together,” it’s probably fair to say I need to cite a source for that information, but no reasonable person will fault me for thinking my readership is well-informed and educated enough to not need it. But maybe if I was writing for WUWT I’d be sure to include the citation just to be safe.
It’s safe to say local paper readers are not “well informed.” Well propagandized, maybe.
Whatever.
The “cite” issue was introduced by you, Mr. J., in your comment at 7:14AM, today.
You opened the door to counter-argument by asserting that the ignorant reporter of the article being discussed cited something. He cited nothing of meaningful substance. That is what we are pointing out.
As you knew.
This comment is ONLY for anyone potentially confused by your attempts to keep the climate cult believers from defecting to the side of data-driven, bona fide, science.
So the article is talking scientific gibberish.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Seems you are totally in agreement with our esteemed host.
There is no “heat trapping pollution” from fossil fuels, just highly beneficial gas-of-life CO2
It’s certainly possible that the burning of ff MAY be contributing SOMEWHAT to warming- but to say that the warming is “fueled primarily” by those ff is without any science to back it up. Nobody knows whether ff contribute 2% of the warming, 50% or 95%.
Scientists know this, because that is what the evidence unequivocally shows:
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/causes/
1. The burden of proof is on you. You have cited zero evidence/data proving human CO2 causes meaningful warming.
2. The data-backed science says that is highly likely that human CO2 is negligible in view of the 2-orders-of-magnitude-greater natural sources and sinks:
3. CO2 UP GREATLY. WARMING NOT.
Game Over.
Love figure 3.!
It shows it was as warm or warmer in the Early Twentieth Century compared to today, in Savannah, Georgia.
CO2 increases seem to have no effect on Savannah, Georgia. There’s more CO2 in the air today (420ppm), but the temperatures are not any hotter than they were in the recent past with less CO2 in the air (280ppm). CO2 is just along for the ride. CO2 is nothing to fear and nothing that needs regulation going by regional surface temperature charts like the one for Savannah, Georgia.
The trees and other vegetation in savanna are growing faster than ever. Thanks to more CO2.
Story tip: Climate Change hitting Trans sex workers in Indonesia. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian-transgender-climate-change-bandung-b2522422.html
“a Warm Spring is No Indication of Climate Change” – sorry, Anthony, a wrong headline. Anything, absolutely anything, is a reliable indication of Climate Change. Personally I use following twelve irrefutable indications of Climate Change: January, February, March, .., December.
Meanwhile where I am it is April Showers accompanied by March Winds (to quote two very old monthly weather tags. As usual the natural equinoctial weather disturbances have led to some stormy interludes although no one is ever able to specifically predict when and where they’ll strike and what force they’ll strike with in the four to six weeks period either side of March 21st.
I doubt even Mother Nature has a plan for all the random patterns that make weather what it is, although the UK Met Office may want us to believe it is better than that when clearly its mind is on its agenda and not on customer service delivery. Can we please have sensible and objective weather presentation back again or get in people who can deliver forecasts without bias and bigotry added?.
.
As can be seen in Figure 3, the observed high temperatures during the late 20’s and early 30’s were substantially higher than more recent readings. That period also saw the prolonged drought in the Midwest that led to the dust bowls, massive crop failures and large outmigration of farmers from those areas. CO2 levels were lower then than now so a reasonable person could make the conclusion that there is no correlation between levels of CO2 and ambient temperatures.
One can only imagine the level of hysteria had the notion of “climate change” been in fashion back then!
It was that 1930s temperature warming that prompted Guy Calendar to revive Svante Arrhenius’ hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 increases caused atmospheric warming. World War II took everyone’s eyes off that ball, so it went unnoticed that temperatures went down in the 1940s even as wartime industry ramped up. The mild temperature spike in the 1950s revived the erroneous hypothesis and we’ve been playing ‘alarmist whak-a-mole’ ever since.
Mr. Calendar should have more fully examined Arrhenius’ “hypothesis.” It is off. By a lot.
The mean [GMT] trend over the twentieth century is ~0.075K/decade (IPCC, 2007). … about a third of the rate implied by Arrhenius’ calculation, which did not account for adjustments of the climate system to increasing CO2.
(Source: Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate by Murry L. Salby (2012) at 64-65. Emphasis mine.)
Guy Calendar was not a physicist nor did he make any calculations. He simply looked at temperature trends at several stations and a handful of CO2 measurements made during the early 20th Century. As Dr. George Simpson, president of the Royal Meteorological Society critiques in the journal after Calendar’s article, all he had possibly demonstrated was a coincidence. Coincidence is not causality.
It’s probably a fair to say that those warmer temperatures that occurred in the 30’s could happen again, because climate is just that variable. If it happens before this whole “Climate Change!” house of cards falls down we’ll get to see the hysteria first hand.
Shudder.
1) Your Figure 3 is for “Extremely Hot Days” for the entire state of Georgia, not “locally” to Savannah
2) GISS stations often go back to (at least) 1880, why limit it to “the last 50 years” ?
The first “Savannah” station I found on the GISS website with data back to (January) 1880 :
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=USW00003822&ds=14&dt=1
The (homogenised) data for “Spring” (March-April-May) is graphed below.
For people flying in and out of Savannah airport in springtime the average temperatures went from lows just below 17°C (62-63°F) around 1970 to a high just above 21°C (70-71°F) in 2012.
Oh the humanity …
” heat-trapping pollution “
Consider anything that follows to be nonsense.
{The flag on the building does not look like the flag of Georgia}
The flowers are nice. And GA is nice this time of year.
OMG, it’s gonna be slightly warmer than average this spring! How will we survive?
Some people don’t have enough real problems to worry about.
Lies, damned lies and your government.
It is misleading to call average weather recordings over 30 years as “climate” nor – from the Climate at a Glance page – “The difference between weather and climate is a matter of time.” Any such use should use a capital letter, as with “Climate Normals” meaning an arbitrary definition using time-periods, such as 30-year Normals (1991-2020)
From NOAA:
Simply stated: The Normals are the basis for judging how daily, monthly and annual
climateweather conditions compare to what’snormalaverage for a specific location in today’s climate. (my corrections)If world average temperature goes up or down two degrees, my climate will still be cold in winter, hot in summer, and too dry for natural tree growth. When the Cascade Mountains crumble and wash into the Ocean, then my climate will change.
I have lived my entire life of 68 years in Savannah. This spring has been one of the most delightfully cool springs in recent memory. My condo overlooks the Wilmington River, and I go out in my boat daily. My family owned a house directly on the beach at Tybee Island for over forty years.
The beach at Tybee is about where it has always been, the weather is about the same, the road to Tybee floods at about the same level on a spring tide as it always has, and the atomic bomb is still missing in Wassaw Sound.
Many things have changed as Savannah has grown over my 68 years here, but the climate and ocean levels are still the same. If the past 68 years have not produced observable catastrophic effects of climate change, neither will the next 68 years.
I hope every Watts article from Climate Realism, Heartland or elsewhere is also posted here.
They are high quality articles and every one I have read has been added to my daily climate and energy recommended reading list. No other author has a perfect “batting average” in the past five years
Savannah? Savannah, Georgia? Spring has been over for a month down there, what are these idiots babbling about? They live in a veritable paradise on Earth and they are crying about it? Please, someone go over and beeatch slap these morons.