Coldest Winter in the CONUS (so far) since the late 1970s?

[TerryM]

There's been no trend in Sierra Nevada mountain snow pack. We'd need a very long term lowering of snow pack in the mountains to come to any conclusions about snow in California. Just 3 winters ago they saw their 5th highest pack in the record going back to the 1870s.

Was it the Sierra Nevada snowpack that he had written about?

I'm still struggling to remember his name but seem to recall that his paper postulated that California or perhaps Southen California would not have to worry about fresh water in the foreseeable future. 

 

If 2011 had the 5th greatest snowpack measurements and 3 years later we're at the all time lowest I'd venture a WAG that we might be trending toward extremes

Terry

[The_Global_Warmer]

Yes. again the anomalies are smaller simply because they use a warmer normal period. That's all. 

It is an interesting dataset in that it is updated frequently and you get a sense of how the short

term climate varies. You can see MJO signatures and other oscillations that get damped out

when you look at a monthly anomaly. 

 

Thanks ORH_wxman. 

 

 

At this point you are standing by your claim that NCDC has a warm bias.  The only logical conclusion is that you must think there is tampering or the people running the NCDC dataset are incompetent accross the board and even though they publish detailed papers of every correction, every step of their process they apparently are not aware of this warm bias 

 

But you know it has a warm bias.  Of course you haven't shared with us your evidence of this.

 

You just made up the bolded.  You haven't even done a simple google search of CFSR V2 2m temperatures.  Or you would not be saying that.

 

 

I think it's pretty clear from a spatial standpoint why January in the CONUS is not as cold as you desperately wish it was. 

 

It will probably cool off quite a bit the next week.  That should make you happy. 

 

 

DATA SOURCE: River Forecast Centers ~5000 stations per day, including ~1500 stations from the Hydrologic Automated Data System (except above 5km altitude), and Climate Anomaly Data Base ~several hundred stations per day. Climatologies used to calculate the anomalies were updated to use the 1981-2010 climatology dataset as of August 5, 2011.

RESOLUTION: 0.5 degree x 0.5 degree

DOMAIN: 20N - 60N; 140W - 60W

FORMAT: The format is sequential 32-bit IEEE floating point created on a big_endian platform (e.g. cray, sun, sgi and hp). The undefined (missing) value is 9999.

WINDOW: Day 1 analysis is valid for the window from 12Z on day 0 to 12Z on day 1; because of report receipt timing, daily minima are available 1 day earlier than the maxima and the means.

ANALYSIS SCHEME: Modified Cressman (1959) scheme (Glahn et al. 1985; Charba et al. 1992). Minimum stations for analysis: 350. If the number of stations is fewer than the minimum, the analysis is not performed for that day.

QUALITY CONTROL: Climatological standard deviation check. If a reported value is more than 4 standard deviations removed from the historical distribution, the value is omitted from the analysis.

 

[TerryM]

Friv

Do you happen to remember the paper from ~ a year ago that had been used here to ridicule the possibility that California and the Western States were facing a fresh water crisis?

Terry

[ORH_wxman]

January 2014 will be interesting...its going to cool off a ton in the final week. If it can be around as cold as 2011 or 1994 was nationally in January, then it has a legit shot with 1 month to go to be a top 25 coldest winter. I don't think it can catch 2009-2010 though at #16 (or is it 17th now?..they keep changing the rankings)

[Jonger]

Friv

Do you happen to remember the paper from ~ a year ago that had been used here to ridicule the possibility that California and the Western States were facing a fresh water crisis?

Terry

I hear Saudia Arabia is a bit lite on water.

I'm trying to remember the last time California hasn't had water worries. It's par for the course. We used to have billboards in Michigan with stereotypical western residents slurping water from the great lakes with straws. The cowboy & surfer.

[Sundog]

I hear Saudia Arabia is a bit lite on water.

I'm trying to remember the last time California hasn't had water worries. It's par for the course. We used to have billboards in Michigan with stereotypical western residents slurping water from the great lakes with straws. The cowboy & surfer.

The west was settled in what can be considered a wet period. The climate record shows that it has been drier in the past (relative past not 20,000 years ago) and we might be entering another period where rainfall amounts return to their lower levels prior to that of the last 200 years.

[ORH_wxman]

You may want to clarify or reconsider this statement ORH.

 

The cfs is fine if you know how the recent conversion has been.

 

But it is not fine to use as a long-term measure of global temperature nor for comparing ranks of years. 

 

For example, it shows 1980 as warmer than 2011, which is of course absurd (unless your name is blizzard1024). 

 

 

I was talking about in context of using it for something like this thread. (tracking the anomalies for the CONUS this winter)

 

Yeah, obviously we wouldn't use it for gathering temp trends since 1980. We don't need it for that since we have 4 or 5 reliable datasets.

[Jonger]

I was talking about in context of using it for something like this thread. (tracking the anomalies for the CONUS this winter)

 

Yeah, obviously we wouldn't use it for gathering temp trends since 1980. We don't need it for that since we have 4 or 5 reliable datasets.

I know this is semi off-topic, but do you consider OHC datasets reliable? In particular, going back into the 1950's.

[weathafella]

So much anecdotal stuff in both sides.....

I moved to Los Angeles in November 1976 and stayed 15 years before returning east. When I arrived, there was a severe drought, snowpack was anemic to non existent, the sky was falling. A year later, floods, mudslides, and a 30+ foot Sierra snowpack.

This cold winter we are having doesn't and shouldn't effect the thinking about climate change. Perhaps if this cycle went multi year (maybe 5-10+) and was measurable world wide then we could talk.

[blizzard1024]

At this point you are standing by your claim that NCDC has a warm bias.  The only logical conclusion is that you must think there is tampering or the people running the NCDC dataset are incompetent accross the board and even though they publish detailed papers of every correction, every step of their process they apparently are not aware of this warm bias 

 

But you know it has a warm bias.  Of course you haven't shared with us your evidence of this.

 

You just made up the bolded.  You haven't even done a simple google search of CFSR V2 2m temperatures.  Or you would not be saying that.

 

 

I think it's pretty clear from a spatial standpoint why January in the CONUS is not as cold as you desperately wish it was. 

 

It will probably cool off quite a bit the next week.  That should make you happy. 

 

 

Here is the CFS anomaly for the CONUS month-to-date for January 2014....

 

 

Not much different. 

[skierinvermont]

Here is the CFS anomaly for the CONUS month-to-date for January 2014....

 

ncep_cfsr_noram_t2m_anom.png

 

Not much different. 

 

Not even close. The CFS map is -.5F below the 1981-2010 mean. The NCDC map is 2F above the 1971-2000 mean. 

 

It's pretty obvious to an objective eyeball (which obviously yours is not). But then it should have been even more obvious considering you had already seen the weekly NCDC data showing the month as 2F above average and commented on this fact. That you still thought the two maps were similar shows that because of your extreme bias you can't even put 2 and 2 together. 

[blizzard1024]

Not even close. The CFS map is -.5F below the 1981-2010 mean. The NCDC map is 2F above the 1971-2000 mean. 

 

It's pretty obvious to an objective eyeball (which obviously yours is not). But then it should have been even more obvious considering you had already seen the weekly NCDC data showing the month as 2F above average and commented on this fact. That you still thought the two maps were similar shows that because of your extreme bias you can't even put 2 and 2 together. 

 

I was looking at the patterns. I couldn't find the NCDC stuff.  You are a nasty person. chill out dude. 

[blizzard1024]

Not even close. The CFS map is -.5F below the 1981-2010 mean. The NCDC map is 2F above the 1971-2000 mean. 

 

It's pretty obvious to an objective eyeball (which obviously yours is not). But then it should have been even more obvious considering you had already seen the weekly NCDC data showing the month as 2F above average and commented on this fact. That you still thought the two maps were similar shows that because of your extreme bias you can't even put 2 and 2 together. 

 

You, along with the mainstream, have a warm bias. Explain why the raw temperature data for the U.S is adjusted down by as much as 1.5F looking back almost 100 years. If you take the adjusted data minus raw HCN data you get this. see below.

 

 

 

What is their rationale? where is the reference for this? I lost it as I have read it a while back. I would like to read it again. It didn't make much sense before to my illogical mind that actually thinks and does not blindly accept stuff. I am not saying people are committing fraud. No way. But it takes away credibility from data sets when they are adjusted. Obviously you are not comparing apples to apples here with current data vs temperature data 100 years ago. You have to adjust to estimate what it was 100 years ago. That is not ideal and has error and why I like the satellite data the best. I have emailed someone I know who uses the CFS for an explanation about this dataset. I saw that 1980 is warmer than 2011 which I admit seems unlikely.  On another note, the reanalysis data also should not be used for long term climate trends either. I have seen people use this to prove how much warmer it is now vs 1950 etc. 

[ORH_wxman]

Not even close. The CFS map is -.5F below the 1981-2010 mean. The NCDC map is 2F above the 1971-2000 mean. 

 

It's pretty obvious to an objective eyeball (which obviously yours is not). But then it should have been even more obvious considering you had already seen the weekly NCDC data showing the month as 2F above average and commented on this fact. That you still thought the two maps were similar shows that because of your extreme bias you can't even put 2 and 2 together.

Its much closer than that though since the NCDC weekly maps only go to the 18th. CFS goes to the 27th. Its been cold in the CONUS since 1/18. I think the difference is somewhere a bit over a degree F.

[ORH_wxman]

You, along with the mainstream, have a warm bias. Explain why the raw temperature data for the U.S is adjusted down by as much as 1.5F looking back almost 100 years. If you take the adjusted data minus raw HCN data you get this. see below.

 

 

What is their rationale? where is the reference for this? I lost it as I have read it a while back. I would like to read it again. It didn't make much sense before to my illogical mind that actually thinks and does not blindly accept stuff. I am not saying people are committing fraud. No way. But it takes away credibility from data sets when they are adjusted. Obviously you are not comparing apples to apples here with current data vs temperature data 100 years ago. You have to adjust to estimate what it was 100 years ago. That is not ideal and has error and why I like the satellite data the best. I have emailed someone I know who uses the CFS for an explanation about this dataset. I saw that 1980 is warmer than 2011 which I admit seems unlikely.  On another note, the reanalysis data also should not be used for long term climate trends either. I have seen people use this to prove how much warmer it is now vs 1950 etc.

The adjustment is mostly made for TOBs (time of observation). Previous coops often reset their thermometers in the afternoon which mathematically creates a warm bias as each day gets "2 shots" at a high temp and the warmest one is always recorded as the high. Since many were switched to early morning later on, the opposite effect happened leaving the old ones with a warm bias.

I don't take all the adjustments hook, line, and sinker, as they've shown to be mistake-prone in the past...but the TOBs adjustment is real and has to be implemented or the earlier record gets a warm bias.

[blizzard1024]

The adjustment is mostly made for TOBs (time of observation). Previous coops often reset their thermometers in the afternoon which mathematically creates a warm bias as each day gets "2 shots" at a high temp and the warmest one is always recorded as the high. Since many were switched to early morning later on, the opposite effect happened leaving the old ones with a warm bias.

I don't take all the adjustments hook, line, and sinker, as they've shown to be mistake-prone in the past...but the TOBs adjustment is real and has to be implemented or the earlier record gets a warm bias.

Thanks. That is an easy description instead of having to wade through a whole technical attachment. You saved me some time. I appreciate your civility on this forum. I wish others had this. 

[StudentOfClimatology]

The thread title really needs to be changed, imo.

[blizzard1024]

The thread title really needs to be changed, imo.

How??? I can't do it.....I tried. 

[AvantHiatus]

How??? I can't do it.....I tried. 

Have a mod change the title, it's quite simple. The suspicion keeps growing.

[blizzard1024]

Have a mod change the title, it's quite simple. The suspicion keeps growing.

 

suspicion??? OK......     that is a strange way of putting it. 

[ORH_wxman]

How??? I can't do it.....I tried.

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/42559-coldest-winter-in-the-conus-so-far-since-the-late-1970s/?p=2676490

[skierinvermont]

Thanks. That is an easy description instead of having to wade through a whole technical attachment. You saved me some time. I appreciate your civility on this forum. I wish others had this. 

 

The TOBS adjustment has been explained to you before. Usually after about a week you forget and brush it under the rug.

[blizzard1024]

The TOBS adjustment has been explained to you before. Usually after about a week you forget and brush it under the rug.

 

No it hasn't. I have never even heard of the acronym before. Why are you so intent on this?  There are datasets 

that need adjustment. I get it. But every single adjusted dataset that I have seen always shows more warming now vs before, after the adjustment whether it is SST data, sea ice cover or OHC.  I will start a thread on this when I have time. I believe I have counted at least 10 datasets. This is especially true of datasets that have very coarse data years ago and are fine resolution now. It makes you wonder what is really happening. i am very skeptical of adjusted data for this reason.

 

You and others misunderstand me. I am an old school scientist. Calling me a "denier" is downright insulting. By calling people deniers you are ruining your credibility. It is as if this whole global climate change is now a religion. Science is not belief based. I

dig deep and don't believe everything I see because it is peer reviewed or some expert scientist says so. I think for myself. My background is in atmospheric science with a keen interest in climate and paleoclimatology. My job is forecasting the weather so it does not deal with climate directly. But a good forecaster needs to know climate very well.

 

This forum is helpful because some folks provide good information. There are many scientists who don't buy the CO2 hype. When I was working on my M.S I took radiative transfer from a brilliant PHD professor emeritus whose degree was in nuclear physics, radiation and atmospheric science.  He has written books on radiation, radiative transfer and thermodynamics. He was very skeptical of CO2 having much role in our climate system too. His argument was the forcing is just not enough without feedbacks.  Any modeler will tell that feedbacks are the hardest thing to model and lead to major errors. I see it is in our weather models every day. I realize weather models are initial value problems and climate models are boundary value problems which are two classes of PDEs but model errors propagate in both types of problems. 

 

For the record...my position is as follows....CO2 increases will lead to SOME warming. I don't see any evidence at present that supports that feedbacks will amplify this small role. Natural variability still dominates and will. I don't disagree with the basic rad tran. Its the feedbacks that are the unknowns and I am skeptical of. this is a reasonable approach and non-hyped. 

Reliable Sea ice data only goes back to the cool periods of the 1970s. Reliable OHC data only goes back to 2003. Reliable temp data in my opinion only goes back to 1979 with the satellites. Until I see evidence in these datasets that shows rapid warming I will maintain my position. 

[StudentOfClimatology]

I agree that the term "denier" is used too loosely, though I think it does apply to many people nowadays.

You're not denying the fact that increasing CO2 induces a measurable radiative forcing, as viewed from the top-of-atmosphere. So, I wouldn't label you a denier.

Personally I try to avoid using the word in scientific discourse. I was at an AGU related conference last year, and one of the speakers decided to use the word several times in his speech. He was pretty much met with boos and facepalms from the audience.

[blizzard1024]

I agree that the term "denier" is used too loosely, though I think it does apply to many people nowadays.

You're not denying the fact that increasing CO2 induces a measurable radiative forcing, as viewed from the top-of-atmosphere. So, I wouldn't label you a denier.

Personally I try to avoid using the word in scientific discourse. I was at an AGU related conference last year, and one of the speakers decided to use the word several times in his speech. He was pretty much met with boos and facepalms from the audience.

I wish you luck in the field of climatology. I really am sincere here. I could not take it. Too much

politics and less and less grant money that is harder and harder to secure. I have heard this

from some very intelligent  grad students I know and they don't make stuff up. In fact, with

many branches of science research being slashed in budgets, it is getting tougher in many fields....

so i wish you the best. Do what you have to do to make a career but challenge the mainstream

if you really have questions....you will learn a lot and heck may even be respected. It used

to be that way 20 years ago. Of course you better be correct or at least onto something not

considered by the mainstream. I fear that if the CAGW ideas don't materialize and they lower

projections to 1-2C of warming in 100 years...climate research will dry up. That is why I believe

some climate scientists are scrambling to account for the lack of surface warming in the past 15-17 years.

The objectivity in my opinion is lost or tainted by some, but likely there are many more

who really believe in their work with no agendas and I respect them even if i disagree. anyway, thanks for

the civil comments. take care. 

[skierinvermont]

I agree that the term "denier" is used too loosely, though I think it does apply to many people nowadays.

You're not denying the fact that increasing CO2 induces a measurable radiative forcing, as viewed from the top-of-atmosphere. So, I wouldn't label you a denier.

Personally I try to avoid using the word in scientific discourse. I was at an AGU related conference last year, and one of the speakers decided to use the word several times in his speech. He was pretty much met with boos and facepalms from the audience.

 

To suggest net negative feedback to RF and deny that the net feedback to RF is at the bare minimum slightly positive is to deny science that is just as basic as radiative transfer calculations of RF. The AR5 concluded based on the literature and evidence therein that ECS is extremely likely greater than 1C and likely greater than 1.5C. Now I don't mind somebody arguing for the lower end of this range (1.5-3C vs 3-4.5C) but to deny that ECS is extremely likely >1C and likely >1.5C is to deny very fundamental foundational conclusions of climate science. It is to be a denier. 

 

Oh and not to mention that from time to time he will cast doubt on the 3.7W/m2 and 1.1C response to doubling CO2. But when he wants to pretend to be a good boy he will toe that line. 

[blizzard1024]

To suggest net negative feedback to RF and deny that the net feedback to RF is at the bare minimum slightly positive is to deny science that is just as basic as radiative transfer calculations of RF. The AR5 concluded based on the literature and evidence therein that ECS is extremely likely greater than 1C and likely greater than 1.5C. Now I don't mind somebody arguing for the lower end of this range (1.5-3C vs 3-4.5C) but to deny that ECS is extremely likely >1C and likely >1.5C is to deny very fundamental foundational conclusions of climate science. It is to be a denier. 

 

Oh and not to mention that from time to time he will cast doubt on the 3.7W/m2 and 1.1C response to doubling CO2. But when he wants to pretend to be a good boy he will toe that line. 

 

I have never casted doubt on the 3.7 w/m2 of external forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration. That's not true. There was a time I was looking into where that number came from.  In fact, I was the one who tried to show you the basic radiative transfer related to the temperatures which CO2 has the most leverage on based on the wavelength of its maximum emission...the 15 micron band. Again many people on this climate forum still don't understand that CO2 is swamped by H20 in the lower atmosphere by its absorption bands and also its much higher concentration. It is in the upper troposphere, especially the tropical upper troposphere where, theoretically, CO2 should have the most influence because water vapor is so scarce. We are not seeing that so far. Just because it warms up there does not mean more water vapor automatically will be present up there. We have precipitation processes, convection especially, that are sinks of H20 vapor which technically is a sink of a primary GHG!  To think the climate models have the precipitation process and convection parameterized well enough to account for this is naiive. I don't care who these scientists are. I know many real atmospheric scientists who doubt the models can do this...NO model that I know of both, weather or climate, handles convection well at all. NO model. So to say the feedbacks are likely positive is still dubious. There are datasets that show drying in the upper troposphere...but no...they are wrong. There are cloud datasets that show cloud cover correlates well to the observed temperature (ISSCP) since the early 1980s... but wait....that is not good data either for long term trends.

 

BUT I am going to sit in on a webinar that goes over the AR5 on Thursday. Maybe I will see something that changes my mind. who knows. I do have an open mind on this stuff but at the moment...I don't see enough evidence that we will see much more than 1C. And more importantly, I don't disrespect those who disagree with me...like you do.  

 

[The_Global_Warmer]

Reliable Sea ice data only goes back to the cool periods of the 1970s. Reliable OHC data only goes back to 2003. Reliable temp data in my opinion only goes back to 1979 with the satellites. Until I see evidence in these datasets that shows rapid warming I will maintain my position. 

 

That is all wrong. 

 

Passive microwave started in 1972.  The satelitte record goes back to 1966.  Reliable records on a biweekly or monthly record go back much futher to around WWI. 

 

It doesn't fit your agenda so you choose to discard the information.  What really gets me Is that you are a scientist.  Other scientists have spent thousands of hours or more collecting the data to give us long term reliable records.  Not to mention the people took the observations to help us put it together that are long dead by now.  And you just ignore them like they and their work doesn't exist.

 

The satelitte temp data being more reliable than the long term temperature record isn't even worth speaking about.

 

You better stop using analogs pre 1979.  May not be reliable.  You wouldn't want your work to suffer would you?

 

The OHC claim means you have done zero research into the ohc time series and you are guessing or this is stuff you read on the denier blogs.

 

Skier is right you have been presented with all this stuff for years and it's obvious you gloss over it and just pick out what you want.

 

They call that a fantasy.

 

You have cited your education multuple times to give yourself credibility in your views.  But then you discredit thousands of scientists who have the same education in their fields. 

[Jonger]

That is all wrong. 

 

Passive microwave started in 1972.  The satelitte record goes back to 1966.  Reliable records on a biweekly or monthly record go back much futher to around WWI. 

 

It doesn't fit your agenda so you choose to discard the information.  What really gets me Is that you are a scientist.  Other scientists have spent thousands of hours or more collecting the data to give us long term reliable records.  Not to mention the people took the observations to help us put it together that are long dead by now.  And you just ignore them like they and their work doesn't exist.

 

The satelitte temp data being more reliable than the long term temperature record isn't even worth speaking about.

 

You better stop using analogs pre 1979.  May not be reliable.  You wouldn't want your work to suffer would you?

 

The OHC claim means you have done zero research into the ohc time series and you are guessing or this is stuff you read on the denier blogs.

 

Skier is right you have been presented with all this stuff for years and it's obvious you gloss over it and just pick out what you want.

 

They call that a fantasy.

 

You have cited your education multuple times to give yourself credibility in your views.  But then you discredit thousands of scientists who have the same education in their fields. 

 

Weather balloons were launched well before the satellite era, but sea ice coverage was crap before 1979. Shipping records were the main technique at reconstructing the arctic ice coverage, we know how well shipping records worked out for sea temps. Junk.

[StudentOfClimatology]

To suggest net negative feedback to RF and deny that the net feedback to RF is at the bare minimum slightly positive is to deny science that is just as basic as radiative transfer calculations of RF. The AR5 concluded based on the literature and evidence therein that ECS is extremely likely greater than 1C and likely greater than 1.5C. Now I don't mind somebody arguing for the lower end of this range (1.5-3C vs 3-4.5C) but to deny that ECS is extremely likely >1C and likely >1.5C is to deny very fundamental foundational conclusions of climate science. It is to be a denier.

Oh and not to mention that from time to time he will cast doubt on the 3.7W/m2 and 1.1C response to doubling CO2. But when he wants to pretend to be a good boy he will toe that line.

Definitely agree re: the feedback mechanics and climate sensitivity, personally I favor 3-4K of eventual warming given an initial doubling of CO2.

Many of the processes governing feedback responses occur at the quantum/molecular level and have been verified by the best particle physicists in the world. However, nothing is a given when you get down to the sub-quantum level, where our knowledge is fuzzy at best.

So I guess I'd consider "blizzard" to be a contrarian, rather than a flat out denier.