This is the 3rd or 4th in a series. There is an article on WUWT called “Drats! Down the warmhole the warming went” about a new paper from Harvard:

“Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a “warming hole” over the eastern United States—that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.”

The argument is essentially that the air pollution over the northeast USA kept temperatures artificially cool until clean air legislation in the 1970s – 1990s time frame.

So I’ve been looking at the NOAA data. Today it is Illinois.

The NOAA says Illinois has been warming since 1895 by a microscopic 0.04F / decade.

Frankly, I don’t see it. See the area I circled above. Wouldn’t you agree that was the warmest period in the last 120 years?

If I change the start year to 1925, Illinois has been cooling at -0.04 degF / Decade.

Changing the criteria to Table and Rank, here are some things that jumped out at me.

1) 1921 was the warmest year.

2) The warmest year from this century was 2006, 106 out of 117th.  It didn’t make the top 10.

3) 2011 tied for 92 out of 117 … 2.6F colder than 1921.

4) CO2 is one wimpy GHG in Illinois

Changing criteria to Table and Year

1) 2008 was ranked 19 out of 117. 98 years were warmer!

2) 2009 was ranked 34 out of 117. 83 were warmer.