NCDC data shows that the contiguous USA has not warmed in the past decade...

WUWT ^ | 11/5/2011 | Anthony Watts

[Signalman]

There’s been a lot of buzz and conflicting reports over what the BEST data actually says, especially about the last decade...

Here’s some media quotes recently about the BEST preliminary data and preliminary results:

“‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.” – Dr. Richard Muller

In The Sunday Mail Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties:

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’ - Dr. Judith Curry in The Sunday Mail

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels in an essay at The GWPF wrote:

“The last ten years of the BEST data indeed show no statistically significant warming trend, no matter how you slice and dice them”. He adds: “Both records are in reasonable agreement about the length of time without a significant warming trend. In the CRU record it is 15.0 years. In the University of Alabama MSU it is 13.9, and in the Remote Sensing Systems version of the MSU it is 15.6 years. “

In the middle of all those quotes being bandied about, I get an email from Burt Rutan (yes THAT Burt Rutan) with a PDF slideshow titled Winter Trends in the United States in the Last Decade citing NCDC’s “climate at a glance” data. This is using the USHCN2 data, which we are told is the “best”, no pun intended. It had this interesting map of the USA for Winter Temperatures (December-February) by climate region on the first slide:

[RushingWater]

Wow - another ice age in the making??

[justa-hairyape]

That fits very well with the solar driven cooling theories. Solar cycle 23 was significantly weaker then solar cycles 21 and 22. Without the atmospheric heating caused by the 1998 El Nino, we would probably have a solid cooling trend since the early 1990's.

So the US winters have been cooling. We all have witnessed the affects from that cooling the past 3 winters and this will be cold winter #4 in a row. Now the summer has seen some recent warming in the US southeast, but summers in the northwest have continued cooling along with winters in that area. My guess is that the warmer summer temps in the southeast are caused by the cooling mountains out west. Those cold mountains block the heat coming up from Mexico during the summer. That heat is then forced into Texas and then to the east. So during an Ice Age, Texas and the southeast will be the place to be. Which of course should be obvious.