Weather is all over the place and always has been.
Posted on 12/31/2007, 10:34:00 PM by saganite
ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2007) — The year 2007 is on pace to become one of the 10 warmest years for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature for 2007 is expected to be fifth warmest since records began in 1880. Preliminary data will be updated in early January to reflect the final three weeks of December and is not considered final until a full analysis is complete next spring.
The preliminary annual average temperature for 2007 across the contiguous United States will likely be near 54.3° F- 1.5°F (0.8°C) above the twentieth century average of 52.8°F. This currently establishes 2007 as the eighth warmest on record. Only February and April were cooler-than-average, while March and August were second warmest in the 113-year record.
The warmer-than-average conditions in 2007 influenced residential energy demand in opposing ways, as measured by the nation’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index. Using this index, NOAA scientists determined that the U.S. residential energy demand was about three percent less during the winter and eight percent higher during the summer than what would have occurred under average climate conditions.
Exceptional warmth in late March was followed by a record cold outbreak from the central Plains to the Southeast in early April. The combination of premature growth from the March warmth and the record-breaking freeze behind it caused more than an estimated $1 billion in losses to crops (agricultural and horticultural).
A severe heat wave affected large parts of the central and southeastern U.S. in August, setting more than 2,500 new daily record highs.
Global Temperatures
The global annual temperature − for combined land and ocean surfaces – for 2007 is expected to be near 58.0 F – and would be the fifth warmest since records began in 1880. Some of the largest and most widespread warm anomalies occurred from eastern Europe to central Asia.
Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6°C and 0.7°C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
The greatest warming has taken place in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Anomalous warmth in 2007 contributed to the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, surpassing the previous record low set in 2005 by a remarkable 23 percent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is part of a continuing trend in end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of about 10 percent per decade since 1979.
U.S. Precipitation and Drought Highlights
Severe to exceptional drought affected the Southeast and western U.S. More than three-quarters of the Southeast was in drought from mid-summer into December. Increased evaporation from usually warm temperatures, combined with a lack of precipitation, worsened drought conditions. Drought conditions also affected large parts of the Upper Midwest and areas of the Northeast.
Water conservation measures and drought disasters, or states of emergency, were declared by governors in at least five southeastern states, along with California, Oregon, Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware at some point during the year.
A series of storms brought flooding, millions of dollars in damages and loss of life from Texas to Kansas and Missouri in June and July. Making matters worse were the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin, which produced heavy rainfall in the same region in August.
Drought and unusual warmth contributed to another extremely active wildfire season. Approximately nine million acres burned through early December, most of it in the contiguous U.S., according to preliminary estimates by the National Interagency Fire Center.
There were 15 named storms in the Atlantic Basin (Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico) in 2007, four more than the long-term average. Six storms developed into hurricanes, including Hurricanes Dean and Felix, two category 5 storms that struck Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Nicaragua, respectively (the first two recorded category 5 landfalls in the Atlantic Basin in the same year). No major hurricanes made landfall in the U.S., but three tropical depressions, one tropical storm and one Category 1 Hurricane made landfall along the Southeast and Gulf coasts.
La Niña conditions developed during the latter half of 2007, and by the end of November, sea surface temperatures near the equator of the eastern Pacific were more than 3.6°F (2°C) below average. This La Niña event is likely to continue into early 2008, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
Chuckle ... bee
I’d be interested in knowing the same data for Mars or even the sun. It’s just a statistic anyway, and doesn’t truly indicate a trend.
It is zero and headed to -20 tonight. This is entirely normal.
All time record December snows in New England.
I’m interested in knowing if this data is derived from the much maligned ground stations and also the comment in the article which seems to say the last ten years have been the hottest on record (maybe I read it wrong). Also, this seems at odds with NASA’s upper atmosphere data. I know there are FReepers who follow this stuff closely, maybe even a ping list for this stuff.
That’s strange, because I just read another article (several articles, actually) that stated that there had been no global warming since 1999. Maybe the US was warmer, but the world average has remained the same.
I have also read articles that have predicted that perhaps this winter is going to signal a swing back to the global cooling and perhaps the scientists need to figure out why.
Ten years from now, we’ll be hearing a story about how this year is going to be one of the five hottest on record, because this is the same story with different text in it that has been running every December 31st for seven years. And every time they come to new highs, they go through after the data’s challenged, and throw out the whacked up readings and it’ll be yet another average temperature spectrum yet again.
Least the reporter was able to get New Years off.
Here’s one link on the questionable quality of temperature records:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/12/27/weathering-and-thermometer-shelters/
This is a better one from American Spectator:
NOT SO HOT
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12492
These Nazi, money grabbing SOB’s need to go to Hell and find out what warming is about.
recall a story about how temperature has often been measured for this kind of data collection by placing the thermometer near heat pumps, exhaust pipes or what have you.
Sorry I don’t have the link but I’ll post it if I can.
How can we trust a report of this kind after such fraud has been documented?
from the UK Telegraph -
There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter
From the New Stateman: Has global warming stopped?
David Whitehouse
Published 19 December 2007
255 comments Print version Listen RSS ‘The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 and every year since 2001’
Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?
Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.
From the Ottawa Sun: ottawasun.com - Editorial - Is global warming over already?”Global warming has temporarily or permanently ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should, according to the fundamental theory ...
By Noel Sheppard | August 9, 2007
A change in climate history data at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.
For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.
McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.
Thanks Brad! I was looking for that very article the other day and couldn’t find it. I knew from having read that article that they had changed their methodology. Good post!
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