Articles Tagged "World Temperatures"

It should have been the height of summer, but was notable only for its low temperatures.

The UK has just endured its coldest August for 17 years, which was marked, say forecasters, by a complete absence of 'hot days'.

The month also saw the lowest single-day August temperature for 23 years, with it falling to 55f (12.8c) in Edgbaston, Birmingham, last Thursday.

And several 'notably' cold nights were recorded last week

An exceptionally cloudy period in the South East of England put something of a dampener on the holiday period as heavy rain fell across large swathes of the country

The prolonged poor weather has been blamed on a band of low pressure being pushed across the country by the jet stream - the fast-flowing air currents in the upper atmosphere that move weather systems across the northern hemisphere - which was further north during the extended sunny spells of June and July.

It meant that by the end of August there had not been a single day when the mercury rose above 81f ( 27c), forecasters said.

In late 2009 the UK Meteorological office solemnly warned the world that it expected 2010 to be warmer than 1998, the hottest on the instrument record. (“Climate could warm to record levels in 2010”, Met Office, December 10, 2009)

A bastion of global warming theory, the Met Office went on to say that a record warm year is “not a certainty”, as the el Niño cycle then developing in the Pacific may give out early, and was referring to 2010 as a whole rather than the first few days of the year in the UK. But the release’s timing was most unfortunate as it had barely been issued before Britain was literally buried in snow, and exceptionally cold conditions had grounded airline traffic and stopped public transportation systems.

This proved too much even for the BBC which has faithfully reported the greenhouse line. In an interview gleefully shared around the growing network of sceptic newsletters and blogs Met office head, John Hirst, was grilled by a BBC presenter over these forecasts (broadcast January 7, 2010). The interview shed little light on the issue but it is by no means the first time the Met Office has issued a doubtful seasonal forecast. The UK’s The Independent newspaper estimates that the Met has failed to predict wet summers for the past three years; and that its annual global forecast predictions have been wrong for nine of the last 10 years (“Met office deserves to be shown the door”, The Independent, January 19, 2010). In 2009, for example, the office forecast a “barbecue summer”, only for the actual summer to be cooler and much wetter than previous summers.

The Met Office is hardly alone in making poor seasonal forecasts, incidentally. In 2007 the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which is definitely not pro-warming, issued an analysis of seasonal climate predictions by the country’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which found that the overall accuracy of the predictions is just 48 per cent. (“World climate predictors right only half the time”, June 8, 2007). There is no reason to think anyone has a better success rate.

NSW shivered through its coldest winter in 12 years, while daytime temperatures in August hit their lowest since 1990.

NSW experienced average daytime temperatures of 15.9C, making it the coldest winter since 1998 and the 16th nippiest winter on record.

Climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Shannon Symons says widespread rainfall also resulted in the wettest winter since 2005.

"Northern inland regions received above, to very much above average rainfall and that was mainly in July and August, and that's pretty much the case (across) NSW as well," Ms Symons told AAP today.

Inland rainfall was attributed to a La Nina event, which creates cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

"When we have La Nina events we, not always, but usually see enhanced rainfall across eastern Australia," Ms Symons said.

In this report, we review the long-term climate history of Massachusetts and find little in the way of evidence that the greenhouse gas build-up in the atmosphere has much-altered Massachusetts’ climate. While statewide average temperatures have generally risen in Massachusetts over the past 115 years, they have, in fact, changed little over the past 75 years. Massachusetts precipitation and drought histories since the end of the 19th century are marked by annual and decadal variability atop an overall increase in total annual precipitation and decrease in the incidence of drought.

Paleoclimate indicators such as tree-rings provide evidence that there have been times in the past 1,500 years that have been both wetter and drier than conditions experienced in Massachusetts during the past 100 years—a strong indication that cycles of drought and wetness form a natural part of the Massachusetts climate system.

The impact of any climate changes in the state has been minimal (if not beneficial). Tourism is flourishing, air quality is improving, heat-wave mortality is declining, and diseases such as Lyme’s disease and West Nile Virus spread for reasons unrelated to climate.

Along with the observed climate history of Massachusetts, we analyze what the future impacts on the climate will be if Massachusetts ceased all of its greenhouse gas emissions, now and forever. What we find is eye-opening. Even a complete cessation of greenhouse emissions from Massachusetts will only slow the future rate of global warming by about two thousandths (≈0.002) of a ºC per century. The impact of sea level will be an equally meager two hundredths of an inch. These changes are scientifically and realistically meaningless.

In a commendable effort to improve the state of the data, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has created the Australian High-Quality Climate Site Network.

However, the effect of doing so has been to introduce into the temperature record a warming bias of 41.67 %. And their climate analyses on which this is based appear to increase this even further to around 66.67%.

This post is the summation of what I believe is the first ever independent check on the official climate record of Australia. It is also the first ever independent check on the official record of an entire continent.

I will try to keep it simple.

Click source to download PDF file and read FULL report from Ken Stewart

Mass of polar air also hangs over Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil

Dionisia was waiting her turn in the crowded medical centre, her baby bundled up on her back with a manta, the traditional multicoloured Andean cloth. "My son has got a problem with his lungs," explained the young mother, who believes that it is due to the cold spell that has hit Lima.

Dionisia lives in Manchay to the east of the Peruvian capital, a sprawl of plywood houses with makeshift roofs of corrugated iron, plastic or cardboard that offer little protection from the winds that sweep over the hills.

For the first time in 40 years, temperatures in Lima fell to 8.8C at the end of July. Since then they have hovered around 13-15C. Houses are poorly insulated in Lima, and according to Percy Mosca of the Peruvian department of meteorology and hydrology, "the cold is made worse by the unusually strong winds in the region, as well as high humidity of more than 80% and sometimes even 95%".

Yes, you read it correctly. Dr. James Hansen’s latest article, "What Global Warming Looks Like" and associated full paper, "Global Surface Temperature Change", supports the hype of man-made global warming. It does nothing to show that man is responsible for the current climate temperature but the details are illustrative and interesting. Here are a few of the key points that one could easily miss but they were certainly not invisible to the fine doctor.

If you look into the first paragraph of the full paper you see the real key to the claim that the globe’s temperature rose as fast in this decade as it did in the past two. To define the issue I go back to a discussion on a sceptic website several years ago where it was agreed that any running average over more than three years was deceiving at best. In the IPCC AR4 report they went to a running average of 9 years, if I recall, illustrating that the climate was still warming. The average temperatures had been dropping for 5 or 6 years at the time. Give or take a few years between data submission and publishing. At the time I thought it was entirely dishonest as did a number of scientists whose comments I saw. At the time I queried,

“What are they going to do next time, average 10 years to make their point.”

Well, as you might imagine, since it has been a few years, Dr. Hansen had to extend the running average to 12 years! As the late Dr. Stephen Schneider stated, referring to AGW supporting scientists,

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their monthly report on global climate. The findings show that July 2010 was the 2nd warmest July on record, second only to July of 1998.Also from the period of January through July had the warmest average ever recorded. NOAA also found that the global sea surface temperatures were the fifth warmest on record for the month of July and for the period of January through July 2010 it was the 2nd warmest period, the warmest was recorded in 1998. July was the 305th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average.

Couple of interesting facts from the data shows we had a very wet July on a global scale which includes the monsoon season in Pakistan that has caused deadly flooding over a very wide spread region of the Peshawar province. The flooding in Pakistan is the worst since 1929. Also the Arctic ice shelve was 16.9 percent below the average from 1979 to 2000 and was the second lowest on record. The record low for the month of July was in 2007. However we had a reversal of melting ice on the Antarctic ice shelve with a record 4.8 percent growth, which is the largest, recorded for the month of July.

Finally, a weather person has mentioned the word “blocking” when talking about the heat and fires in Moscow. It’s a natural event as the world shifts from the warming trend of the 1990s to a cooling trend since 2000. Distortion of reality about global temperatures continues with warming claims while Western North America, most of Eurasia and large areas of the southern hemisphere report below normal temperatures. It’s been the coldest summer on record north of 80°N latitude and rate of sea ice melt continues to decrease.

Recently the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency as hundreds of people died from the coldest temperatures in 50 years.

Fifty years ago there was a cooling trend as global temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980. It troubled promoters of human CO2 as the cause of global warming. During the cooling period, CO2 from human activity increased the most in human history. They tried to solve the problem by plugging variables into the models until results equaled what was happening. It has nothing to do with reality, but allows them to claim their models work because they recreate past conditions. It’s even better if the cause has a human source. In the 1940–80 cooling, they added sulfates. Trouble is sulfate additions continued but global temperatures began to rise.

Obsession with finding human causes means they ignore what we know about natural mechanisms. Failure to include natural mechanisms is complicated by lack of knowledge or understanding of weather and climate mechanisms by most involved in the politics of climate science.

This decade has been marked by a number of weather extremes – which show how vulnerable our societies are

This summer has been one of weather-related extremes in Russia, Pakistan, China, Europe, the Arctic – you name it. But does this have anything to do with global warming, and are human emissions to blame?

While it cannot be scientifically proven (or disproven, for that matter) that global warming caused any particular extreme event, we can say that global warming very likely makes many kinds of extreme weather both more frequent and more severe. For weeks, central Russia has been in the grips of its worst-ever heatwave, which has caused probably thousands of fatalities. As a result of drought and heat, more than 500 wildfires have raged out of control, smothering Moscow in smoke and threatening several nuclear facilities. Russia's government has banned wheat exports, sending world grain prices soaring.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is struggling with unprecedented flooding that has killed more than a thousand people and affected millions more. In China, flash floods have so far killed more than a thousand people and destroyed more than a million homes. On a smaller scale, European countries like Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic have also suffered serious flooding.