Tag: NOAA
NOAA 17 of 48 states warmest decade was far in the past
Using the NOAA data I thought I would look and see when the warmest 10 years were for each state.
17 states warmest 10 years were well in the past. Only 2 were 2002 to 2011. All of the rest but one overlapped 1998. And California was an outlier with 1988 to 1997 as the warmest 10 years. At the bottom of this post is the list with some highlighting.
Here is an animated gif of the 48 states with the warmest 10 years highlighted in gray. Click on it for the full effect.
Is the USA warming? The NOAA data says”It depends” – Part 2
Part 2 of 3. Part 1 explains the series. Part 1a and Part 1b have some nice graphs
In part 1 I took a look at the NOAA data when it starts in 1895. I then thought why not write an R script to find the trends for each state using every possible year as a start date.
42 of 48 states were cooling and 1 had no trend from 1998. No surprise. The world started to cool in 1998. I’ll return to 1998 in the future.
But look at 1921. And 1930. 21 states have been cooling since 1921 and 1930. 1921 is an important pivot point in US climate.
The trend for Alabama is cooling at -0.19F / decade since 1921.
The green line is the trend, the blue line is the default loess fit, the red line is the data, the black line is the average for the whole period, and the faint top and bottom grey lines are max and min.
Does anyone see the mark of CO2 warming in that graph?
Here is the list of states cooling from 1921. (Plus Ohio since .01F is so small)
I’ll include the graph for Tennessee with a new addition — the grey rectangle highlights the 10 warmest consecutive years.
Is the USA warming? The NOAA data says”It depends” – Part 1a
Part 1a of 3. See part 1 for the start of this series. This quick post is just to contain graphs from the other cooling states. Part 1b will be an animated gif of the 48 states where the data starts from 1895.
The green line is the trend, the blue line is the default loess fit, the red line is the data, the black line is the average for the whole period, and the faint top and bottom grey lines are max and min.
Is the USA warming? The NOAA data says”It depends” – Part 1
Part 1 of 3. Update: Part 1a has all the graphs.
There is an article on WUWT called “Drats! Down the warmhole the warming went” about a new paper from Harvard. I’ve blogged about the NOAA data that shows some states have been cooling here, here and here.
There is also an article on WUWT called “Climate scientists who have been claiming Texas is warming are totally wrong.” I commented with some of the links of my articles to show that Texas is not the only state that isn’t warming.
So rather than continuing to investigate the states one state at a time on the NOAA Climate At a Glance page I thought it would be best to download the raw data here, and analyze it with R myself.
So I read the state.README file, created a state to statecode mapping file from the info in the stae.README and started analyzing.
First step was to graph Arkansas, one of the states I looked a previously. as you can see both the NOAA and I think Arkansas is cooling at -.03F/decade since 1895.
The green line is the trend, the blue line is the default loess fit, the red line is the data, the black line is the average for the whole period, and the faint top and bottom grey lines are max and min.
I think we can agree that Arkansas warmed until about 1921, stayed warm until round 1955, cooled until around 1980 and them warmed up again but never matched the 20s/30s/40s.
So then I graphed all of the continental states (Alaska and Hawaii aren’t in the file, but regional and national summaries are). And then I wrote some code to count which states were cooling from 1895 to 2011 and which were warming.
6 of the 48 were cooling. 3 had a trend of 0. And 5 had a trend of .01F/decade.
Considering that NOAA/NCDC tend to adjust the heck out of the data to make the present warmer, to find that 30% of the 48 states were cooling to flat from all the way back in 1895 makes me think that the USA is not warming. Parts of it are. Parts of it are not. It is only by putting all of this data in the meat grinder of averaging it all that you can torture out the claim that the USA is warming.
Here are the warming states. 
The Warming Hole – Illinois – NOAA
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.
The Warming Hole – Tennessee – NOAA
This is the 2nd of a series of … until I get bored with it. 🙂
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 Tennessee.
And the results are quite interesting.
The NOAA says Tennessee has been cooling since 1895 by -.03F / decade. Which is the same as Arkansas.
Changing the criteria to Table and Rank, here are some things that jumped out at me.
1) Only 1 year from this century made the top 10 – 2007
2) 2011 is at position 88 out of 117
If you sort by year, 2010 was 46 out of 117 and 2009 and 2008 were 36 out of 117. Those are really low scores! It has been a cold century in Tennessee.
Take a look at the bar chart. CO2 is the wimpiest GHG ever! The 20s and 30s and 40s were hot compared to this whole century.
You have to wonder why all that sulphate in the air totally neglected to effect Tennessee until 1960!
The Warming Hole – Arkansas – NOAA
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 Arkansas. The settings I use are:
And the results are quite interesting.
The NOAA says Arkansas has been cooling since 1895 by -.03F / decade.
Changing the criteria to Table and Rank, here are some things that jumped out at me.
1) The warmest year from this century was 2006, 99 out of 117th. 18 years were warmer.
2) 1896 was tied with 1934 for 110th out of 117.
3) 1897 was tied with 2011.
4) CO2 is one wimpy GHG in Arkansas
sunshine hours 