While the United States has had a relatively mild winter to date, the winter has been exceptionally harsh in much of Europe, especially Eastern Europe in recent weeks. What does all of this say about global temperatures?
The answer to that question is never as simple as what the weather is at my house or what the weather is in one region experiencing an extreme. It takes time to collect and analyze global data, and with the large variation between warm and cold across just the Northern Hemisphere, it will be interesting to see how the overall global temperature in January and February compares to recent years.
In other words, it will be interesting to see whether the cold or warm wins the tug-of-war.
We already have the NOAA statistics for the U.S. for January, where it was that 4th warmest for the contiguous U.S. We do not yet have the global stats for January, which should be released for NOAA within days, but the global January stats will be as influenced by the most recent European cold spell as February stats will be since the cold started late in January but has continued well into February.
I will post the January and February global stats after they are released, and I will use the same NOAA reports that I've used here in the past for the sake of consistency.
For the record, I'm a meteorologist, not a climate scientist, so I'm merely discussing the statistics, not making an editorial comment about climate change.
Extremely Harsh Eastern European Winter
News coverage in the U.S.tends to be U.S.-centric, so I have not seen an abundance of coverage on the European cold, but here are a few highlights from a Washington Post article (Heavy snow for days cuts of thousands in eastern Romania; military planes transport food) of what is a growing humanitarian crisis:
Last week, the Telegraph reported that temperatures had hit -40 degrees F in Finland.
And what a shame they had all those solar collectors in Germany as an offering to ward off bad mojo.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/in-tennessee-heat-waves-frustrate-nuclear-power/
"The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2012 was the 19th warmest on record at 12.39°C (54.30°F), which is 0.39°C (0.70°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). The margin of error associated with this temperature is +/- 0.08°C (0.14°F)."
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/1
It seems the world is getting colder.
They can't all be right.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
What you need to ask yourself when people like toxicity claim to be able to explain short term trends, is if that's the case why does the IPCC need a basket of climate models? If the problem is deterministic i.e. can be solved with a simple formula, then you only need 1 climate model.
The climate is either a complex, stochastic (i.e. requires a formula so complex you need to fall back on probablility theory) like calculating cancer rates, life expectancy etc. or it's deterministic e.g. Einstein's e=mc(squared), Newton's laws of motions etc.
It can't be both.
Basically states that the loss of sea ice cover in the arctic ocean in summer is changing weather patterns with result that Europe has a cold snowy winter.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/02/california_snowpack_drought_global_warming_water.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?pagewanted=all
While I'm glad to find out that the Pacific Ocean isn't done dumping snow on the Western Sierra, the rest of the West is looking kinda grim when it comes to fresh water. Regarding the Sierra Nevada's future, the quote from this article is: "[Nobel Laureate Steven] Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.” "
In plain terms, he admits that his own methods won't really tell you anything about whether or not snowfall has really increased, decreased, or remained the same–and then goes on to conclude that snowfall records haven't increased. Care to explain that one, jdey?
Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure, and the EU would have suffered an economic body blow to match that of Japan's tsunami a year ago. No electricity means no water, no trams, no trains, no airports, no traffic lights, no phone systems, no sewerage, no factories, no service stations, no office lifts, no central heating and even no hospitals, once their generators run out of fuel. - Kevin Myers, in Independent (Ireland).
Subtitle: "French & German Wind Likely Made the Difference during Arctic Cold Spell"
R2: "EU would have suffered an economic body blow to match that of Japan's tsunami"
Please call me an 'alarmist'. It's become a compliment, coming from you.
One possible side effect of global warming and the melting ice caps may be that some northern climates do actually see colder temperatures as the heat transfer from lower latitudes slows or stops.
Updated 12:20 04 May 2010 by Stuart Clark
BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.
The research finds that low solar activity promotes the formation of giant kinks in the jet stream. These kinks can block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, while allowing in winds from Arctic Siberia. When this happens in winter, northern Europe freezes, even though other, comparable regions of the globe may be experiencing unusually mild conditions.
Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading in the UK began his investigation because these past two relatively cold British winters coincided with a lapse in the sun's activity.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627564.800-quiet-sun-puts-europe-on-ice.html
The statistical evidence is pretty clear. Modern climate change is happening and is clearly happening faster than any of these records has shown is 'normal' in our planet's history.
While this may not mean much to most city dwellers, agriculture will be greatly impacted if the climate changes quickly. This could lead to increased food prices at best, and scarcity at worst.
Suppose I buy a car that is 20 years old. Five minutes later I drive it into a brick wall at 80 mph. Now, according to your theory, nothing bad will happen to the car unless I have detailed information for the past 20 years covering everywhere the car has been, and at what speeds it was driven. You theory is easily proven false.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it. ” Voltaire.
CO2 causes
Volcanoes [No joke, just after the Iceland volcano there were peer reviewed studies
linking it to global warming]
Earthquakes [Same thing after the Japan earthquake]
More snow
Less snow
Heat waves
Intense cold
( ICS) Irritable Climate Syndrome
Floods
Droughts
More extreme weather
Less extreme weather
Melting ice
Fewer hurricanes
More cloud
Fewer clouds
Stratospheric warming
Stratospheric cooling
etc. etc. ad nauseum.
The science is settled..
F&F
The reason climate change is the preferred term over global warming is because although warming is the primary effect, there are many secondary effects including sea level rise, increased droughts, increased floods, melting glaciers, melting ice shelves, melting Arctic ice, shifting air currents, shifting ocean currents, etc.
Note that shifting air currents and shifting ocean currents can certainly cause localized, temporary cold conditions in various parts of the world, even while the average temperature over the entire Earth continues to rise.
The sea level rise is only 3 MM per year or 1 cigarette length in 30 years. Big Deal ??
The seas have actually fallen in recent years so the average rise is even less than 1 cigarette in 30 years.
The average temperature has fallen since 2001 !
The inability of climate scientists to predict climate even 11 years in their future proves that their level of understanding is very low !Why spend tens of trillions based on it ?
AR4 predictions .3 ° C warming between 2001 and today.
http://tiny.cc/zwa7x
Actual COOLING between 2001 and today.
2000
http://tiny.cc/owp6f
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00201553 per year
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/trend
The fact that I post irrefutable data like this is why the fish fear me !
Europe is much warmer than the Northeast US because of ocean currents, and is so is our Northwest. And both had relatively cold winters, while here in the Northeast this will be the second warmest ever.
Almost invariably, a cold winter in Northwest US means a warm one in Northeast. That has to do with Pacific currents, El Nino. The Gulf Stream probably has similar variations that affect Europe, that we don't yet understand.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/year-after-mclean-review-of-2011-global-temperatures.html.
And THATS the way it is...
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt
According to them, January 2012 was 0.03C colder than January 1988.
Looking at Hansen's comments that 2011 was the 9th warmest (according to GISS) on record, he said that this was due to a solar lag (ended 2009) being delayed in showing up in the temperature record by 18 months, followed by a La Nina event.
In January 2012, we were half way up the solar rise that started in 2009, and we didn't have a La Nina event. I'd be interested in hearing the new explanation that Hansen will surely provide as to why Jan'12 was colder than Jan'88.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html
Jan. 2012 appears to be warmer than other recent la Nina years, 2000 and 2008, but slightly cooler than last year's. La Nina has its strongest effect on global mean temperature in winter. Anomalies will rebound this year.
2011 was the warmest la Nina year on record.
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/gcs_2011_en.html
Solar activity does play a role, with estimated 0.1 C between peak and valley, but note there's about a 2-year lag, so we're still largely in the valley.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Solar activity now has a 2 year time lag? rofl.
There are obviously loads of months that I could pick from the temperature record with even larger disparities. e.g. September 1992 was colder than September 1882.
Give us all a break and just admit your hypothesis is a joke. If you accept that the climate is naturally variable then it all makes sense. If as per your hypothesis, you believe that the temperature is influenced by mankinds CO2 emissions then each and every time, the global temperature is missing heat, you have to explain where it's gone. Saying that only a year or a decade or 30 years or whatever you care to mention is important, would be ludicrous. You expect science to provide an explanation for all energy imbalances. And a month is a very long time for an energy imbalance to exist.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI.jpg