Thursday, July 18, 2019

The current "record breaking" heat wave isn't

Isn't breaking records, that is - at least not any interesting records  Sure, it's being reported that way:
Tens of millions of Americans will swelter through the hottest weather of the summer over the next few days as a record-breaking heat wave builds across much of the central and eastern U.S.

"A dangerous and widespread summer heat wave is expected through this upcoming weekend across much of the central and eastern U.S.," the National Weather Servicesaid. "A large dome of high pressure will allow high temperatures to surge into the 90s and 100s in many locations, while heat indices will top 100 and approach 110 degrees or higher."
Oh, hum.  Here's a prediction: not a single US State will register a record high temperature during this heat wave.  None.

You want to see a real heat wave?  Look at July 1936.  Eleven States set high temperature records that stand to this day.  That Wikipedia page is a little shifty on this, trying to hide the decline in record temperatures.  You'll see an asterisk next to South Dakota, which the Wiki page says means Also on earlier date or dates in that state.  So what was that earlier date for South Dakota?  July 1936.

Oh, and three more States set high temperature records the next month, August 1936.  That makes 14 out of the 50 States suffered record high temperatures in the summer of 1936.  That's almost 30% of the States.

There's a reason that this period is called the "Dust Bowl".  Droughts came in 1934, 1936, and 1939.  That's what Thermageddon looks like.

So why don't we hear that 1936 was the "Hottest Year Evah!!!!11!!eleventy!!!"?  Because the data is "adjusted":
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have a boring name, but it has a very important job: It measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it seems to be a captive of the global warming religion. Its data are fraudulent.

What do we mean by fraudulent? How about this: NOAA has made repeated "adjustments" to its data, for the presumed scientific reason of making the data sets more accurate.

Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — lowering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past, and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in the recent present.
(thanks to Aretae for pinging me with that link)

I've posted repeatedly about this, for over a decade.  This seems worth repeating:
You read in the press about how much the temperature has risen in the last 100 years. There's an interesting story in the data, but the press doesn't know it.

The data has two components: the raw measurements themselves, and a set of adjustments.

Adjustments are made for a bunch of reasons: time of observation adjustments (you didn't take a reading at exactly the same time each day), environmental changes, weather station site relocations, urbanization, etc.

An interesting question is how much of the 20th century's temperature change is due to adjustments? As it turns out, the answer is all of it.

This chart shows the before-adjustment and after-adjustment temperatures for the 20th century, super imposed. All of the warming is due to adjustments, rather than raw data.  Almost all of the adjustments are for readings after 1970.

Oh, and the title of that post was pretty funny: Global Warming Caused By Lousy Data.

But look at the read peak in the middle of the chart.  1936.

The only thing to add to this after ten years is that the adjustments have become even more aggressive in that time period, with older temperatures adjusted further downwards than you see here and recent temperatures adjusted even further upwards.  That's how the Usual Suspects® are able to keep coming out with "ZOMG IT'S THE HOTTEST YEAR EVAH!!!11!!!!!eleventy!!!" headlines each year.  The raw data isn't changing, but the adjustments are continually in flux.

And the adjustments are manufactured in industrial quantities:
The scope of the data adjustment issue is really astounding:
An interesting question is how much of the 20th Century's warming came from adjustments, rather than from raw data? A picture is worth a thousand words:
What you're looking at is the annual adjustment made to the raw temperature, for each year in the 20th Century. You'll notice that almost no adjustments are made to years up to 1960, and then a very interesting shape appears in the graph.

A hockey Stick.
And what Science®-denying Tea-Bagging place did I get that?  From the Fed.Gov's weathermen, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Sharp eyed readers will note that over 80% of the 20th Century's reported warming came from adjustments to the data, not to the data itself.  The raw data simply doesn't show this at all.  That's one righteous Thermageddon, right there.

Except ...

The adjustments are not applied to the record temperatures, of course.  About all the fiddling they can do is what Wikipedia did, trying to sell you the fact that South Dakota set a record high in 2006 (it didn't - the record was set in July 1936).  USA Today is doing the same thing: the only way this is "record breaking" is because Podunk saw a record high; the State that Podunk is in sure won't, and a dozen other States sure won't, either.

So remember: fourteen of the fifty States say that today's weather is nothing new.  Not only is it not new, it's over 80 years old.

1 comment:

Eric Wilner said...

Dust Bowl? I have it on good authority that there was no such thing. It's a recent invention of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and some old novelist.
... I recall hearing a radio Public-Disservice Announcement, several years ago, warning of impending unprecedented disaster. Said disaster was described in considerable detail, and sounded remarkably like something straight out of The Grapes of Wrath. Which apparently no one reads anymore.