July Heat Set U.S. Record 422
gollum123 sends this excerpt from CNN:
"The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States. The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said. In addition, the seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said. U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895. And the past 12 months have been the warmest of any such period on record, topping a mark set between July 2011 and this past June. Every U.S. state except Washington experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, NOAA reported."
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Score:4, Informative)
Minor correction: the O in NOAA is Oceanic, not Oceanographic.
Re:What about the rest of the world? (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno about other areas, but I've read that Europe is also suffering from a very intense heat wave.
Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that the entire planet will heat up uniformly. Some areas may even become unusually cooler.
The biggest concern is actually an increase in natural disasters like hurricanes.
Living in Seattle is Killing Me (Score:3, Informative)
A new cherry-pick start (Score:1, Informative)
In 2017 we will hear "5 years of falling temperatures" and in 2022 "no temperature rise for 10 years" and so on. Just like 1998.
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:5, Informative)
25.33 degrees for those that both care and didn't already type '77.6f in c' into google.
Re:Choose, denialists (Score:5, Informative)
I hope you're being snarky.
http://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2011/noaa_globaltemp_2010.jpg [ucar.edu]
Maybe there was *a* summer as hot in '36 but it's definitely hotter overall than '36.
Re:Choose, denialists (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps you should learn to read. Even the summary says it correctly. Every single month of THIS year is hotter than the hottest one of a random year on record.
Re:AGW Converts (Score:4, Informative)
52 million years ago is easily long enough for tectonics to feature. The continents weren't in the same places they are now, and ocean currents around Antarctica flowed very differently.
Oh, and it was also a time of high CO2.
So I wouldn't go thinking you've made some great rebuttal of AGW there if I was you.
Re:Choose, denialists (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone who says a warm summer proves it, or a cold winter disproves it, doesn't understand the science. At all.
Talk to the actual scientists. There's very good consensus that it's real.
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:5, Informative)
I love it.... "Take the 1936 Texas below normal temperature out of the mix and there goes your 0.2F record making difference with July 2012." Of course, if you randomly take out data points you don't like, you're going to get the result you're looking for. Not to mention that their entire post focuses on the fact that not all states all linearly increased in temperatures, which betrays a complete lack of understanding of how temperatures are come about.
FWIW, a graph tends to be of more value if you evaluate and potentially take out outlier points.
If you are looking for trends. Also, some toss lowest and highest as well.
Just saying.
-AI
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:2, Informative)
The dust bowl was not caused by temperatures, it was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent wind erosion.
It kinda was something other than nature that exasperated the situation.
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:5, Informative)
I think the fact that the previous record was set in 1936 pretty much disproves your "fact" that the weather is setting records "year after year". "Year after year" to most people means "every year or two", not "every 7 decades or so".
Back in 2009 they were saying the it had been the warmest decade ever recorded, [independent.co.uk] and the years between then and now haven't been any less exceptional either.
So yeah, "setting records year after year" is a pretty accurate good description.
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:5, Informative)
No, poster is correct. It's called winsorising [wikipedia.org]. It's common to toss out the top and bottom 5% just to discount anomalies.
But you don't discount it after you see the data because you don't like it, you plan to discount it before you collect the data and more importantly you do it indiscriminately and equally on both sides of the data set. Not just points you don't like after you see the data.
Re:Hopefully it's an outlier (Score:3, Informative)
"Headlines like this prove nothing - the overwhelming body of scientific literature shows that AGW does exist,"
No, it really doesn't. It hasn't been proved, just marketed better than the other theories (which seem to explain things better).
If you're so sure of this tell me what % of carbon is mans contribution.