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Hotter days ahead …
May 2012 global temperature anomalies.
Opinion By Bob Berwyn
SUMMIT COUNTY — Showing signs of increasing desperation, global warming deniers are trying to deflect attention from the clear and present danger of heatwaves, severe storms and wildfires by publishing questionable long-range weather maps suggesting next winter will bring below average temperatures.
Hardly anyone is listening. It’s tough to pay attention to nonsense when the temperature outside is 107 and an unusually intense thunderstorm knocks out your power.
Plus, the same people, like infamous denier Joe Bastardi, to name just one, have made the same claims before, only to be proved wrong time and time again. During last summer’s brutal heat wave, they told us not to worry, next year will be cooler.
Guess what? Now it’s “next year” and it’s hotter than ever. Perhaps the exact location of the hotspots have shifted a bit, but the bottom line is, people are starting to notice that the extreme heat is not letting up. To the contrary, the ratio of record highs compared to record lows keeps increasing and the heatwaves are lasting longer.
Four tropical storms form early in the season; one of them soaks up energy from the bathtub warm waters of the Gulf, then converts all that excess energy into a fury of rain that leaves parts of Florida under water.
A few days later, an intense line of thunderstorms plows eastward, hitting major East Coast cities like a climate sledgehammer. A day later, similar storms, almost subtropical in nature, sweep across north-central Europe.
Soon, very soon, the big global warming denial myth will crumble, as we all ask ourselves why we waited so long to react. But then, it could be too late for millions of people worldwide at risk of succumbing to excess heat, drought and rising sea level.
Along with the heat, it’s getting drier, probably no surprise since, even if it rains, the moisture quickly evaporates. As of Saturday, the U.S. set an all-time record for dryness, with 72.01 percent of the country experiencing some level of abnormal dryness, breaking the record set in 2002, another unusually hot and dry year.
Saturday morning, fully one-third of the U.S. population was under warnings for extreme heat, and Colorado is a bullseye for the weather, with the entire state experiencing some level of drought. Extreme drought prevails in parts of the state that are usually a haven from such conditions, including the northwestern corner and down through the central mountains.
Just last week, a group of scientists pointed out the links between global warming and weather patterns that make destructive wildfires more likely, especially in the Southwest, meshing with repeated climate predictions for the region that come from various sources.
Here’s the language from a federal report on climate change impacts:
“Human-induced climate change appears to be well underway in the Southwest. Recent warming is among the most rapid in the nation, significantly more than the global average in some areas …”This is driving declines in spring snowpack and Colorado River flows … both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades, due primarily to earlier spring snowmelt and higher spring and summer temperatures.”
and:
“Projections suggest continued strong warming, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower scenarios. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual-average increases in some parts of the region, and are likely to be exacerbated locally by expanding urban heat island effects. Further water cycle changes are projected, which, combined with increasing temperatures, signal a serious water supply challenge in the decades and centuries ahead.”
In Colorado, the past 12 months have been filled with extreme’s from the near-record snows of 2011-2012, to an all-time record early snowmelt season and several of the warmest-ever months on record. The mid-June heatwave may go down as the most intense on record, with the June 26 high of 105 degrees setting a record for the hottest June day ever.
June also marked only the third time on record that Denver had a string of five days with temperatures above 100 degrees. Both other times are also during the modern global warming era, in 1988 and 2005, and they both came a little later in the year.
Filed under: climate and weather, Colorado, Drought, forest fires, global warming Tagged: | climate, drought, global warming, heatwave, weather
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Odd that HADCRUT3 shows no significant warming, globally, since 1997.
Its also odd that the latest SREX IPCC report stated explicitly that there is no indication of any trends in severe weather or droughts or flooding, again globally.
So, who should I believe here? Bob, or the IPCC and its temperature data source?
That whole “no global warming since 1997″ is part of exactly the denial myth that I’m talking about. You keep repeating it, yet most of the warmest years on record globally have been since 1997. Total disconnect from reality.
Hi Bob, I would suggest you check the satellite data which you can see here (http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/). Two facts: 1) The US is hotter than average, but much of the globe is currently cooler than average. 2) The global mean temperature this year has not been much different than 2011 and is quite cooler than 2010. Actually you’re totally disconnected from reality if you take a couple of heatwaves as proof of long term climate change.
It’s not just the heat waves – it’s an ongoing global pattern of increasing, more intense and longer-lasting extremes, and perhaps you can’t see the overall pattern because you’re intent on cherry picking certain statistics that support your point of view.
There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence
that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in mean sea level. The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide
only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences. Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging.
–from the IPCC, 2012: Summary for Policymakers: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.
Thanks for the citations. I am fairly sure that scientists will soon have better data on the link between global warming and tropical storms. It seems pretty clear that warmer, more widespread sea surface temps will fuel more intense storms. Some research from Australia suggests that warm SSTs increased rainfall from a tropical storm by 25 percent: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/weather/ocean-temperature-made-queensland-floods-worse–study-20120516-1ypvy.html
Bob,
In August 1913, Oklahoma City had 22 days over 110 degrees. It was the hottest month in Oklahoma City history.
In May 1934, temperatures in Iowa reached 111 degrees. The hottest May temperature ever recorded in the eastern half of the country.
Perhaps you should check your facts before writing drivel?
Steve! I’ve missed ya … Still cherry picking, eh?
Bob Berwyn http://www.summitvoice.org 970-331-5996 “independent online news”
Bob,
Is the 80 degree weather in Summit County bothering you?
I suggest that you read some Steinbeck. Oklahoma City had 61 days over 100 degrees in 1934. That is why the Okies left and moved to California.
Iowa has also seen a sharp decline in hot weather.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/hot-days-in-decline-in-des-moines-iowa/
I think Bob produced a credible report, and the SREX doesn’t state that there is no indication of any trends. What it does say is that the statistical analysis is inconclusive. Which is a substantial difference with “no indication”. There are indications but further study is required to determine the value of such indications. I would believe Bob rather than biased misinterpretations of official reports…
Thanks, Frank, but remember also, this is tagged as an opinion piece. I understand that it’s hard to link extreme weather events to overall global climate trends, but some of it seems pretty obvious. My concern is that, if we wait until the statistical evidence is there, it may be too late to avert the most serious consequences. I’m feeling like we should pay attention to the warning signs.
..check out Richard Alley/s …Escalator video….very significant warming
Bob.
If its so hot, why is the National Center for Environmental Prediction global temp still MINUS .01 for the year ( See upper right corner)
http://policlimate.com/climate/ncep_cfsr_t2m_ytd_anom.png
IN addition , can you explain the jagged fall in global temps, from the same organization, since the PDO flipped in 2008. Dont tell me NCEP now is buying into the denial machine
http://policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png
Bob: the data does not lie. There has been no warming since 1997. Perhaps I am doing the trend lines wrong when I plot the HADCRUT data.
Corect the error of my ways Bob.
Now, what about the second part, Bob? The IPCC SREX report states that there is no global trend in severe storms, floods or droughts. In spite of what Frank states, the SREX explicitly states:
(p9) “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain.
There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities. It is likely that there has been a poleward shift in the main Northern and Southern Hemisphere extratropical storm tracks. There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because of data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems. [3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.4.4, 3.4.5]
There is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia. [3.5.1]
There is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the magnitude and frequency of floods at regional scales because the available instrumental records of floods at gauge stations are limited in space and time, and because of confounding effects of changes in land use and engineering. Furthermore, there is low agreement in this evidence, and thus overall low confidence at the global scale regarding even the sign of these changes. [3.5.2]
More from the SREX Bob and Frank.
From the IPCC 2012 SREX report (chapter 4)
“”There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”"
“”The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”"
“”The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”"
“”Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.”"
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