EDF making bogus comparisons to the Dust bowl
It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the disconnect between Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and the threat of rising temperatures to his own constituents. Last year, Oklahoma endured the hottest summer ever recorded in U.S. history. According to the National Climatic Data Center, Oklahoma’s average temperature last summer was 86.9 degrees.
The previous record for the hottest summer was set in the midst of the Dust Bowl, again in Oklahoma. The Dust Bowl literally blew Oklahoma’s farmers off their land, along with their topsoil. No one wants a repeat of that.
What’s alarming is that the previous record of 85.2 degrees, set in Oklahoma in 1934, was almost two degrees cooler than summer 2011!
Yet another attempt to rewrite history. The Dust Bowl years were much hotter and much drier in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City had 55 days last year over 100 degrees, compared to 72 days in 1936, 68 days during 1913, and 58 days during 1934.
Three summers have had maximum temperatures averaging over 100 degrees, but 2011 was not one of them. June through August maximum temperatures averaged 102.2 degrees in 1936, 101.7 degrees in 1913, 100.5 degrees in 1934, and 99.3 degrees in 2011.
But what really stands out is the number of very hot days over 110 degrees. Almost all of Oklahoma City’s 110 degree days occurred before 1960.
Here is the real kicker. The summer of 1913 had twenty-two days over 110 degrees, compared to two days during the summer of 2011 – which NOAA says was the hottest summer.
U.S. Historical Climatology Network
The hottest month was August 1913. July 2011 afternoon temperatures were almost five degrees cooler than 1913.
Meeker Oklahoma USHCN Temperatures Month Year Average Max Mean Average Min August 1913 106.4 89.5 72.2 August 1936 105.8 90.1 73.7 July 2011 101.9 89.0 75.6
NOAA tampers with the data, and fails to account for major UHI nighttime temperature effects. Then they release selective misinformation to be used by propagandists like EDF.
Thank goodness for courageous people like Senator Inhofe!
What are the data for meteorological summer (June 1 – August 31) in 1913, 1934, and 1936 compared to 2011?
Seventy-two 100 degree days in 1936, fifty-five 100 degree days in 2011.
No, I mean avg temps to rebutt the article. Compare apples to apples.
Then add discussion of UHI.
I ran a max min mean query for the raw daily ghcn data in 1934, 1936 and 2011 and got …
+——+——————+——————+———————-+
| year | max | min | mean |
+——+——————+——————+———————-+
| 1934 | 98.1426869805200 | 70.4021052630200 | 84.27239612177000000 |
| 2011 | 98.9139775704800 | 71.0749038740000 | 84.99444072224000000 |
| 1936 | 100.0203412967600 | 71.5119781569800 | 85.76615972687000000 |
+——+——————+——————+———————-+
This is for all reporting stations in each year. That amount of jump in the mean doesn’t seem right.
I need to get the ghcn monthly raw and processed data to run comparisons w/ the daily data.
The raw monthly and daily data should be ballpark I’d think. A paper by menne-durre on ghcn says they don’t quite match up.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/papers/menne-durre-etalsubmitted.pdf
It would be interesting to see how close they are.
I’m rerunning the query for all OK stations by year > 1930. It may take a while.
That’s for the calendar summer as well. June 21 to Sept 20.
I didn’t mention that. Sorry about the rotten formatting.
here are the top results for raw data for ok summers.
year max min mean
| 1956 | 98.46| 68.71| 83.59|
| 1998 | 97.21| 70.79| 84.00|
| 1934 | 98.14| 70.40| 84.27|
| 2011 | 98.91| 71.07| 84.99|
| 1980 | 99.75| 71.24| 85.50|
| 1936 | 100.02| 71.51| 85.76|
| 1954 | 100.51| 71.58| 86.04|
Part of the reason it was a dust bowl was the deep plowing methods use to turn the soil. Farmers in the plains no longer use that method.
Makes you wonder why all these records have been carefully, (and expensively) kept, when all and sundry with half an hours worth of power, will just rewrite history to suit their own agenda. Why bother with all the work of taking records in the first place?
Great little site for a commentary from the people who were there 1920-1970. The drought, the dust storms, the Okies arrive.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_01.html
But of course it didn’t really happen did it?
I must pay more attention it’s the wrong state!
Still it is a nice site with some great witness commentaries and pictures.
NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS seem hellbent on destroying what remains of their credibility by continuing to support a highly politicized campaign to save the world from a non-existent threat. Even former astronauts have spoken out against NASA’s unscientific pronouncements of global warming doom. I’m sure there are many NOAA and NASA scientists who are embarrassed by their agency’s actions, but are afraid to speak out.
And Drudge continues to make a huge squawk about the heat wave, while not bothering to mention concurrent record cold temps, and how this has nothing to do with the climate change fantasy. What a drudge!
During July 1936, it was 112 in Waterloo, IA, 112 in Rockford, IL, 113 in Peoria, IL and 111 in Saginaw, MI. Now that was a heatwave!! When men were men and could survive that without AC, cable TV and Internet access.
People went to movie matinees because theatres were the only place that had air conditioning
EDF? Wats dis? Environmental Defense Fund? Where do I donate?
As “Pathway” notes, part of the dust bowl was due to plowing methods. Add in years of drought and the results are not surprising. In dry climates, putting in roads, houses, wind turbines, mines, etc all contribute to airborne dust. So do horses, that eat the meager grass to the ground. Every year my yard is filled with tumbling mustard skeletons (similar to tumbleweed) because my neighbor’s horses destroyed all the vegetation. I don’t care how cool the weather is, unless there is rain and responsible building and grazing, you get dust storms. Blaming dust on climate change is a crock.