Mark Albright of the University of Washington reports:

According to the National Climatic Data Center, in Washington State, Apr-Jun 2011 was -3.6 deg F below the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, making Spring 2011 the coldest Apr-Jun in the past 117 years:

Enlarged.

And yet at the same time we are being asked by the Climate Impacts Group to believe that our snowpack is melting 20 days earlier than before global warming set in across our region:

Water managers are beginning to feel a crunch related to climate change. Springtime melt now starts some 20 days earlier than a half-century ago, which is “pretty unequivocally” seen as a signature of climate change.

Sorry, but I don’t think so!

How about Oregon? Dr.Gordon Fulks reports a record there also.

Enlarged.

This is big news indeed. Both Oregon and Washington just experienced the coldest Spring in over a century, using official NCDC data going back 117 years. The April through June period most closely approximates the Spring period. We knew it was cold here but not that cold. Now I better understand why I used so much firewood to keep warm this year.

News agencies should contact Mark Albright (Washington State Climatologist 1987 - 2003) at the University of Washington for further details. He is the one who first noticed this. Mark was among the first to point out that Pacific Northwest temperatures have been trending downward for the last two decades. Professor Cliff Mass, also of the University of Washington, recently pointed out the same downward trending temperatures (although for slightly less than two decades).

All of this obviously runs counter to what climate alarmists have been saying for a long while. In science, data trumps theory every time. If the reverse is true, it is NOT science at all.

AMEN

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BOM reports the coldest spring in Australia since at least 1950

Enlarged.

Australia has experienced its coldest autumn since at least 1950 for mean temperatures (average of maximum and minimum temperatures across the nation) with an Australian average of 20.9C.
This was 1.15C below the historical average, and 0.2C below the previous coolest autumn in 1960. It was also the coldest autumn since at least 1950 for Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Large parts of the country recorded temperatures more than 2ºC below the autumn average (figure 1) with about half the country ranking in the coldest 10% of years. The season was
marked by consistent below-normal temperatures in most areas, with only a few individual areas recording their coldest autumn on record. These areas were in northern and central Australia
including the east Kimberley, the central Northern Territory and small parts of northern Queensland.

The cool conditions experienced in autumn 2011 are largely a result of the strong 2010/11 La Nina event which brought heavy rainfall and cool daytime temperatures to Australia, before decaying in late autumn. Of particular significance was March 2011 - Australia’s coldest and wettest March on record for maximum temperatures and third wettest month on record (for any calendar month).

See PDF analysis.

Can you imagine the story had they not be using the data that Dr Salinger manipulated? 

Since the proponents of global warming are being caught without providing supporting evidence, the theory of man-made global warming is being destroyed before our very eyes.  With no hardnosed physical evidence, measurable, observable, replicable evidence, the fiction has been sustained by non-science methods. These include appeals to authority, existence of an elitist scientific consensus, computer models none of which produce physical evidence.

Crippling national energy policies, environmental policies, economic policies are being seriously considered. Such suicidal policies did not originate in the recent fictions of climate change, but from the leaders of the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their friends within the American leadership.

Consider the statement from Maurice Strong, original head of the IPCC - “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse?  Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” This is a very destructive agenda proposed for the US and other free nations by the IPCC, which was met with thundering applause by the thousands of international leftists in Rio.  They pretend to be peace-loving but definitely are not.  New policies by state and federal agencies, which could cost trillions, cripple our economy, and destroy our nation, seem to be the awful agendas of many federal and state agencies and their leaders as well as the agenda of Maurice Strong and the IPCC.

One of the participants in the national climate debate has been the National Academies of Science (NAS).  Many Congressmen love associating themselves with members the NAS, with many having never taken a science course in their educational careers.  But over the years a major problem has been discovered with members of the NAS and the policy statements they produce.
As described by Chris Horner in his book Power Grab, the membership process to the NAS was corrupted more than 20 years ago. Much of the good science has disappeared as has the sound science policy dependent upon sound science.  A backdoor policy for NAS membership has opened to nearly any green leftists seeking membership. They now control future membership, as well as the style and content of NAS reports.  Instead we are getting documents from the NAS which are nearly void of hard-nosed scientific evidence and written in the vague meaningless terms of politic correctness.

Recently the NAS released a report entitled “America’s Climate Choices” discussing our future energy sources and our CO2 emission (here).  Predictably, it was written in the familiar styles of vague political correctness.  One obvious solution to many of these energy problems could be solved with an actively supported nuclear energy program.  The NAS did not mention this obvious solution.  For the record there are currently 67 nuclear power plants under construction around the world (20 of them in China).

Remarkably, Paul C. Knappenberger, a subject matter expert has written an outstanding 20 page analysis of the NAS report. It is posted here.

He summarizes “In these in-line comments (indicated in red font) we will demonstrate, citing results from the peer-reviewed scientific literature and using data available from government web sites, that the certainties that the NAS panel assigns both to the causes of climate change and to its risk to human and natural systems belie the underlying scientific evidence.”

He catches the NAS overstating the scientific certainties (there are many throughout this discredited theory) of man-made global warming hypothesis.  Overstating certainties is just another way to exaggerate all claims.  Regrettably the NAS, leading science organization in the US, failed the obvious point, which is that it never stated that man-made CO2 is a climate problem. It simply assumed it to be true, and then proposes a program of energy rationing and economic suicide as a program for the US to mitigate the assumed non-problem of man-made CO2. 

Britain’s richest energy companies want homeowners to subsidise billions of pounds worth of gas-powered stations that will stand idle for most of the time.

Talks have taken place between the Government, Centrica, owner of British Gas, and other energy companies on incentives to build the power stations needed as back-ups for the wind farms now being built around the country.

It is understood 17 gas-fired plants worth about 10 billion pounds will be needed by 2020.

Bad News: Energy department warns light may go out if wind doies down

More...Why the 250bn wind power industry could be the greatest scam of our age

The Energy Department has been warned that without this massive back-up for the new generation of heavily subsidised giant wind farms, the lights could go out when the wind dies down.

Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, said renewables, such as large-scale wind energy, were intermittent and required back-up generation, a role gas was uniquely qualified to fill.

But as power stations that operate only intermittently would not be financially viable, Laidlaw said: ‘The building of new gas-fired capacity must be incentivised so that gas can fulfil its role as a bridging fuel.’ To that end, energy companies are asking the Government for ‘capacity payments’. This ensures firms are paid a fee all year round for keeping a plant on standby.

As in previous subsidies, homeowners would be asked to pay for them through yet another levy on their fuel bills, which are already expected to soar by up to 20 per cent this year alone. The Department is considering the request from energy companies and an answer is expected in a new energy White Paper due later this year.

Industry sources insist the Government has no alternative but to agree to the ‘capacity payments’ for standby generation if it wants wind power, which also receives huge subsidies, to provide one-third of Britain’s energy needs.

In winter, when the most intense cold period coincides with a high pressure front, most wind turbines do not work.

One industry executive said: ‘Why would we build a power station - costing about 600 million pounds - that is guaranteed to make a loss because it is not used most of the year?’

By 2020, most of Britain’s nuclear plants, old gas-fired plants and coal-fired power stations will be closed, leaving a 30 per cent energy gap to be filled by more new nuclear plants and more wind power. British Gas managing director Phil Bentley has warned prices will have to rise by at least 15 per cent to compensate for the soaring cost of wholesale gas.

Meanwhile the oil price dropped again on fears over the global slowdown.

A story in today’s HUFFPO “Warming Ocean Could Melt Ice Faster Than Thought” Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona and colleagues report the warming water could mean polar ice melting faster than had been expected. Their report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Co-author Jonathan T. “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” Overpeck, co-director of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment, said: “This paper adds to the evidence that we could have sea level rise by the end of this century of around 1 meter and a good deal more in succeeding centuries.” Reading the comments show how much in the dark the AGW proponents are. Such a sad state of affairs. They are so dismissive and downright ignorant of the topic they so boldy comment on. They believe we are solely focused on Al Gore and have no scientific basis for skepticism. I wish we could tie them down into a seat and make them hear the truth...someday.

If you don’t think to these people AGW is a religious see the later post about the end times.

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If anyone finds the notion that warm water would melt ice faster than cold water startling please write me. This is not news. It has been suggested in posts and peer review papers for many years, warmer water’s intrusions into the arctic cause ice to diminish in predictable cycles, cycles that have precious little to do with carbon dioxide.

On October 21st the Associated Press hit the wires with a story entitled ”Sea Ice Melting as Arctic Temperatures Rise.”

The temperatures in the arctic have indeed risen in recent years and ice has declined, bottoming out in 2007 but it is not unprecedented nor unexpected. The arctic temperatures and arctic ice extent varies in a very predictable 60-70 year cycle that relates to ocean cycles which are likely driven by solar changes. 

In 2007, NASA scientists reported that after years of research, their team had assembled data showing that normal, decade-long changes in Arctic Ocean currents driven by a circulation known as the Arctic Oscillation was largely responsible for the major Arctic climate shifts observed over the past several years.  These periodic reversals in the ocean currents move warmer and cooler water around to new places, greatly affecting the climate. The AO was at a record low level last winter explaining the record cold and snow in middle latitudes. A strongly negative AO pushes the coldest air well south while temperatures in the polar regions are warmer than normal under blocking high pressure. See post here.

We agree. And indeed both oceans play a role. In the record-setting (since satellite monitoring began in 1979) summer melt season of 2007, NSIDC noted the importance of both oceans in the arctic ice.

“One prominent researcher, Igor Polyakov at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, points out that pulses of unusually warm water have been entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, which several years later are seen in the ocean north of Siberia. These pulses of water are helping to heat the upper Arctic Ocean, contributing to summer ice melt and helping to reduce winter ice growth.

Another scientist, Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reports evidence of changes in ocean circulation in the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. Through a complex interaction with declining sea ice, warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait in summer is being shunted from the Alaskan coast into the Arctic Ocean, where it fosters further ice loss. Many questions still remain to be answered, but these changes in ocean circulation may be important keys for understanding the observed loss of Arctic sea ice.”

Enlarged here.

The Pacific warm mode favors more El Ninos and warmer water in the far northern Pacific including the Bering Straits. The PDO flipped into its warm mode in 1978 and the arctic temperatures began to warm and ice began to melt.


Enlarged here.

Enlarged here.

Notice how the temperatures in Alaska go through step changes tied to the PDO (Keen).

Enlarged here.

The Atlantic also cycles on a 60-70 year period. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO returned to the positive warm mode in 1995.

Enlarged here.

Frances et al. (GRL 2007) showed how the warming in the arctic and the melting ice was related to warm water (+3C) in the Barents Sea moving slowly into the Siberian arctic and melting the ice. She also noted the positive feedback of changed “albedo” due to open water then further enhances the warming. 

The International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks showed how arctic temperatures have cycled with intrusions of Atlantic water - cold and warm.


Enlarged here.

The correlation was also confirmed by Juraj Vanovcan.

Enlarged here.

See how quickly the arctic ice reacts to warming of the Atlantic sea surface temperatures in 1995 (source Cryosphere Today). This marked a second leg down. We have seen large swings after the big dip in 2007 following a peak in Atlantic warmth in 2004-2005.


Enlarged here.

Although the PDO and AMO are measured differently, both reflect a tri-pole of ocean temperatures. Both have warm north and tropics and cool relative to normal in between in the positive phase and cold north and tropics and warm in between in the negative phase. By normalizing the two data sets and then adding the two, you get a measure of net warmth or cooling potential for both global and arctic temperatures. See how well the sum tracks with the arctic temperatures. Though we don’t have measurements of ice extent, there are many stories and anecdotal evidence that arctic ice was in a major decline from the 1920s to 1940s.


Enlarged here.

At the edge of the arctic Greenland behaves in the same way - with warming and cooling tied to the AMO.


Enlarged here.

Dr. Willie Soon has shown how the arctic temperatures match the solar Total Solar Irradiance (Hoyt/Schatten/Willson) well. Correlation is poor with CO2.

Enlarged here.

We see here how the annual TSI and annual PDO+AMO track together with arctic temperatures.

Enlarged here.

Though the current spike in the Atlantic temperatures and more high latitude blocking may cause another spike of melting in the next few winters as warm water from the AMO pop the last year works its way into the arctic, longer term you can expect arctic temperatures to decline and ice to rebound as the Pacific stays cold and the Atlantic cools and the sun stays in its 213 year Eddy minimum.

That doesn’t preclude some very cold and snowy winters short term. In 2008 glaciologist Bruce Molnia reported a bitterly cold Alaskan summer of 2008 following a La Nina winter with extreme cold and heavy snows resulted in area glaciers to expand, rather than shrink for the FIRST TIME IN RECORDED HISTORY. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass for the first time in at least 250 years.

See PDF here. See Verity Jones recent post on the arctic data here. See more on glaciers and icecaps here.

See post by Arnd Bernaerts on Verity Jones’ Digging in the Clay here with much more on the arctic. See also here how the decade is almost up for the arctic ice disappearing here. See this post by Steve Goddard on Greenland glaciers and sea level. 

This story from London’s Daily Mail is so bad, the reporter won’t even put his or her name on it.

In the story, we learn the Joplin tornado was caused by global warming.  We learn that Katrina was caused by global warming. We learn that droughts are caused by global warming. Floods are caused by global warming. Apparently, every storm or unusual weather phenomena is caused by global warming.

So, lets play ‘climate scientist’ (why not, apparently you don’t have to have any credentials to be one) and take a look at the arguments made in the article.

We’ll start with Hurricane Katrina. Remember how, in the wake of Katrina, we were told that hurricanes were going to be more frequent and more intense? Take, for example, this claim:

The work of hurricane expert Dr. Kerry Emanuel indicates that Global Warming provided the extra margin of energy that gave Hurricane Katrina enough power to break the levees in New Orleans. This is the conclusion of scientists, Global Warming observers along the Gulf Coast and others.

Hurricanes get their strength directly from the heat in the oceans they travel over, so it has long been expected that Global Warming would have an effect on the frequency and/or the intensity of tropical cyclones, which are called hurricanes in the United States. Observations have confirmed a sharp increase in intensity. The result is that the number of dangerous Category 3, 4, and 5 storms has increased. Dr. Emanuel’s innovation, the “power dissipation index,” helps track this intensification over time.

So, what actually happened from 2006 to 2010? The opposite of what was predicted! The five years since Katrina have seen record low hurricane activity—both intensity and numbers! The proof is right here (scroll down from top). The pro-GW crowd got it exactly wrong, again. One would think they would learn some humility, but that never seems to occur.

Second, here is their list of weather events tied to global warming (click to enlarge):

Considering the list encompasses the entire world for 11 years, there isn’t very much here.  Nearly half of the years (2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008) don’t have a single occurrence.  Considering the warmest year was 1998 (see below) and that temperatures have cooled some since then the list proves northing. As I have stated before, if tornadoes were tied to global temperatures there would have been record tornadoes in 1998. They did not occur.

World temperatures from the UK’s Hadley Center. 

Here is a graph of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations (parts per million) since 1997. It continues to rise.


CO2 levels from the Mauna Loa Observatory

But, temperatures do not rise with it. If, as the IPCC contends, CO2 is the dominant force driving atmospheric temperatures, then temperatures would have (more or less) risen along with CO2. That simply hasn’t occurred either in the atmosphere or in ocean heat content (the more important metric).

Blaming the Joplin tornado on global warming smacks of desperation. They are losing the scientific argument so they call people names and make ridiculous claims like blaming an individual tornado on global warming. They get away with it because most of the media prints this nonsense generally without question.