Real Climate Science

Summer’s record heat, drought point to longer-term climate issues

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” said Justin Pedretti, who owns a farm near the boat ramp in Bonaparte, Iowa, and first reported the fish kill.

Under the most wide-reaching drought since 1956, and torched by the hottest July on record dating from 1895, the United States has been under the kind of weather stress that climatologists say will be more common if the long-standing trend toward higher U.S. temperatures continues. Most immediately affected are the nation’s water sources and the people and crops that rely on them.

The flow of the Mississippi River has slowed — at times rivaling 40-year lows — allowing saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to seep far up the river channel, threatening community water supplies at the river mouth.

Summer’s record heat, drought point to longer-term climate issues – The Washington Post

The only reason July was listed as record heat was because NOAA cheated to produce the numbers. July of 1936 was hotter and it was followed by plummeting temperatures. July of 1950 was the coolest on record.

If people are going to get hysterical over cyclical weather, why not just panic that summer will continue to warm through December, or that the afternoon will continue to heat until midnight? It requires about as much brainpower.

Hansen wrote this in 1999, before he completely lost his integrity

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

NASA GISS: Science Briefs: Whither U.S. Climate?

h/t to Marc Morano

It was of course no match for Irene’s massive 50 MPH winds at landfall.

Eugene Register-Guard – Google News Archive Search

The graph above is the USHCN monthly data – final minus raw for all stations. The graph shows the usual cheating, adding 1.8 degrees on to 2011 relative to 1900.

Now look at 2012 – the relative adjustment is much smaller.

It makes no sense algorithmically to have a discontinuity like that between 2011 and 2012. The only thing I can think of is that the hot weather in July allowed them to cheat less than they normally do in order to declare a record maximum.

NOAA announced a couple of days ago that summer 2012 is the hottest ever due to CO2.

The forecast high for Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin tomorrow is 72 degrees.  On August 12, 1936 the temperature was 101 degrees.

In order for 2012 extent to match 2007, essentially all of the ice inside the red circle has to disappear. It isn’t likely to melt, and the only thing which could cause this to happen would be very strong winds pushing the ice towards the North Pole, like in 2007. That is always a possibility, as obviously it has happened before.

There is a lot of multi-year ice inside that circle (see closeup below) and temperatures are pretty much stuck near or below 0C for the indefinite future.

//ARCTIC.IO/OBSERVATIONS/8/2012-08-11/8-N84.294028-E169.268762

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi9y5-Vo61w]

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I love how Reagan addressed the second worst president as “governor”

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth’s polar caps.

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.

Rate of arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted | Environment | The Observer

Scary stuff – exactly the same as what happened between between 1900 and 1940

February 23, 1940

it was concluded that near Polar temperatures are on an average six degrees higher than those registered by Nansen 40 years ago. Ice measurements were on an average only 6½ feet against from 9¼ to 13 feet.

23 Feb 1940 – THE NORTH POLE. Is it Getting Warmer. | BUNDABER…<

A couple of years ago David Barber said that all the multiyear ice was gone, so it seems that conditions have improved considerably over the last two years.

Navy PIPS also shows considerable thickening over the last two years along the Canadian coast to about five metres. Do we expect The Guardian to ever tell the truth about anything?

h/t to Steven Mosher

They have established a precedent where they can keep temperatures “above normal” forever, and establish a new record any time they feel like it – simply by continuing their current scheme of cheating and lying.

Perhaps Paul Ryan will become President of the US Senate and will be in a position to terminate the criminals in charge of the US temperature record.

• Obama didn’t know that his long time spiritual mentor and inspiration for his book was an America hating racist
• Obama didn’t know that his literary agent promoted him for 17 years as being born in Kenya
• Obama didn’t know that the guy who launched his political career was a terrorist
• Obama didn’t know that he had never seen his birth certificate
• Obama didn’t know that he wasn’t a member of the Senate Banking Committee
• Obama didn’t know that he promised to bankrupt the coal industry
• Obama didn’t know that he promised to balance the budget
• Obama didn’t know that he was a socialist
• Obama didn’t know that his billions of green energy money was actually campaign contribution payola
• Obama didn’t know that his stimulus package was a joke

• Obama didn’t know that his whole “Hope And Change” theme was complete bullshit, and that he would turn to the dark side for his next election.