Real Climate Science

COI | Centre for Ocean and Ice | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

There has been essentially no change in ice coverage this month. green shows gain since September 1. Red shows loss.

Eighty years ago, almost 40% of the US was experiencing extreme drought, compared to 3% in September, 2014.

Not only was it dry, it was also very hot. The frequency of 90 degree days in the US has also plummeted over the past 80 years

The 1930s were much hotter and drier than anything we have experienced since.

Humans like to talk about stupid stuff, imagining that they are more intelligent than turnips. One conversation I heard recently is “do animals think?”Having spent much of my life observing nature, I am always amazed by questions like that.

Ten years ago, I was living in Cupertino, CA next to Memorial Park, where they held Shakespeare in the Park on summer nights. One of my kids loved Shakespeare, and we went to the shows almost every night.

The neighborhood seagulls had killed every baby duck except for one that summer, and that one was under attack. He was swimming next to one of his parents, and the seagull was repeatedly diving out of the sky. The duckling and parent simply ducked under the water on each bombing run. This went on for about 15 minutes.

Then, the seagull did something different. Instead of retreating back to the sky – he landed on a nearby rock. A soon as the duckling surfaced – the seagull picked him off. His strategy was to drive the ducks closer to the rock and lull them into carelessness. As soon as he had a sure bet, he went in for the kill.

A friend of mine survived over 100 bombing missions in Vietnam.

He was nearly killed in 1986 flying a Cessna over the mountains near Black Canyon City, Az. His plane got caught in a blue sky downdraft, and he hit the rocks at 30 MPH. Spent the next three months in the hospital with practically every bone in his body broken.

In June 1981 I was working as a wilderness ranger in the Sandia Mountains just outside Albuquerque. Two hang glider pilots were preparing to take off – as a thunderstorm built up. We warned them not to go, but they didn’t listen.

One of them got taken up to 40,000 feet and landed in a tree frozen solid 10 miles away. The other scraped bottom just over the rocks and barely made it down to Tramway Blvd in one piece.

The Bulletin – Google News Archive Search

Heat in the lower troposphere causes evaporation from vegetation and bodies of water, producing cooling. Then the humid air rises and condenses in the upper troposphere, which generates heat that radiates out into space.

Cold precipitation then falls downwards, dragging cold air down to the surface and producing further cooling at the surface.

It is unfortunate that no climate modeler has ever experienced cooling after a thunderstorm, because otherwise they surely would have incorporated this as a negative feedback in their models.

NOAA is desperately trying to make 2014 the hottest year ever, but more accurate satellite data shows that it isn’t going to come close, and continues an 18 year cooling trend.

ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/….. anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt

The amount of winter (Dec-Feb) snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has increased dramatically since 1990 to record levels. This is because Arctic air is pushing further south in the winter.

Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab

Crack government climate experts predicted the exact opposite.

IPCC Third Assessment Report – Climate Change 2001 – Complete online versions | GRID-Arendal – Publications – Other

IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The amount of five year old sea ice in the Arctic has increased dramatically over the past three years.

Note that the last date is estimated, assuming that all four year old ice on September 1 becomes five year old ice by the end of September. The actual amount will likely be a little smaller.

End of August 2011

Estimated end of September, 2014. (Map generated by me, based on NSIDC week 35 map.)

Illinois had no 100 degree temperature readings this year, though they used to be quite common when CO2 was below 350 PPM.