Exacerbated by a massive, exceptional drought, daily, monthly, even all-time record highs have been tied or broken in parts of the South over the past couple of months.
If you have 3,000 weather stations and a 100 year long temperature record, you would expect about 30 of them to break their all-time record in the current year. The math is a bit tricky for climate scientists : 3,000 / 100 = 30.
The “exceptional drought” is much less widespread than many previous droughts, and the heat doesn’t compare with the 1930s.
h/t to Dave G
heh – the ice and snow over the South last winter gave them laryngitis and they couldn’t find their voices to sing.
They have found their voices now, however, to sing the ever more shrill chorus of the only song they know.
Amateur vocalists, amateur weather forecasters, professional fools.
Where has that “Mister Hung” of American Weather Channel Idol notoriety – better known as Heidi Cullen – been lately, anyway
Oh you just noticed the one sided awareness of weather or was it climate?
He he…
The alarmists are so ill,that I wonder why they do not recognize their own fever.
Dunning-Kruger effect.
“The math is a bit tricky for climate scientists : 3,000 / 100 = 30.”
You haven’t adjusted it enough.
I get your point but I’m not sure the maths is quite that simple:
If we assume the max annual temperature at any station is a purely random number with no trend, then you’d expect to set the most maxima in the first few years of the record (eg. in the first year every max is a record, in the 2nd year maybe 50%, 3rd yr maybe 25% etc). After 100 years you’d expect new records to be few and far between.
However, this is a crude simplification which ignores natural climate trends and cycles: You’re highly likely to get bursts of new records at the peaks and troughs of the cycle. Throw in UHI and again you’re likely to get plenty of new record highs.
It is very basic statistics. If you have 100 random numbers, each number has one chance out of one hundred of being the largest.
Yes – but I believe this is only true if a station has an equal probability of setting a record every year. But surely the probability of setting a record depends on how many earlier years you have to beat. The more earlier years, the less chance this year will beat the all-time max.
So, assuming a completely random system with no trends:
Year 1: 100% Probability of all time max
Year 2: 50% probability
Year 3: 25%
…
Year 100: 1/2^99
I think this is correct – I knocked up a quick excel spreadsheet using RAND and MAX and it seems to work out as per the above.
But I agree there’s always a record being set somewhere – but I think it’s because of natural cycles – both regional and global – so the baseline is shifting around all the time.
Year probability 1 1 2 0.5 3 0.33 4 0.25 10 0.1 100 0.01
The probability is the inverse of the number of data points. So in year 100 the odds are 1/100
Sorry – I’m talking nonsense – the table should read:
Year 1: 100%
Year 2: 50%
Year 3: 1 in 3
…
Year 100: 1 in 100
So you’re right. Each station has a 1 in 100 chance of setting a record after 100 years. Doh
They must be right because I received almost 2 inches of drought this week.