Going back a few topics, the NOAA claims that "no states were below normal" temperatures in September were nonsense. There own data shows that at least four states were below normal.
http://hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Sep07TDeptUS.png

Additionally, back in August I captured the NCDC August 16 prediction of September temperatures, and it was inverted from what actually happened. The predictions called for the west warm and the east cool. Not surprisingly, they have removed the link.

Conclusion - the NOAA press department is dishonest and their climate models are fairly useless. Additionally, there hiding of past prediction data makes accountability nearly impossible.

As Dr Alley discussed, stratosphere cooling is a clear sign that the current global warming is being driven by greenhouse gases as opposed to changes in the sun.

Here are some links with further detail on stratosphere cooling.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/the-sky-is-falling/

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/earth/atmos/ozone.htm

Title says it all "IPCC Expert Explains His ***Beliefs***"

Build my Tunnels now. We can not afford to wait any longer. What fine "University" would like to "Computer Model" them? Computer models will will prove the the validity of the idea.

I know the warmth fall we are experiencing in most of the United States has NOTHING to do with Global Warming however, it sure sucks to be sweating in late October in NYC!

Yes - "beliefs". Wake me when he can demonstrate his theories are true.

Oleg - nice catch. Unfortunately, this is all too common. Data is adjusted, readjusted and rereadjusted until the desired result is reached, then the older versions of the data disappear.

These people are literally rewriting the past to change the present.

Oleg,

Has NOAA removed the links to August, July, and June predictions as well? If not, then we can start talking conspiracy. If they have, then I'd say that removing the September prediction is standard procedure, as we are now more than half through October.

So far as "normal" temperatures go, I'd say you almost have a case in one state--California. Both the yellow and the light green on the HPRCC map are close to "normal" and California is the only state that shows any kind of significant negative anomaly (>2 degrees).

I do think that had California been much cooler, it would have been classified as "below normal" but the NOAA map from the press release defines "normal" in accordance with year-to-year statewide averages and ranks this year's temps in comparison to past years. There are 113 years in the record, so they are working with a "mean" of about 56. It took a 76, or 20 above the mean to be classified as "above average" so I'm guessing it would take 20 in the opposite direction to be classified as "below average." We see that 56 - 20 = 36, and since California's September ranked only at 41st coolest, it was ranked as "normal" though obviously on the cooler side of "normal." NOAA has been consistent on this methodology throughout the year and has not changed it simply to make this month look warmer. For example, look here and here. As you can see, the range on both ends was about the same as it is now.

I don't see a conspiracy.

Guys

I'm really bummed. I love cold winters. It probably has something to do with living all my life in North Carolina, where the temperature dipping into the teens (F) is news. I've always wanted to visit some of the real cold places of the world; indeed I dream of being able to visit Vostok, Antarctica. Unfortunately for me, it looks like there's a developign La Nina, which usually brings mild winter temps to my part of the world. If this comes about, this will be the third straight extremly mild winter!! Right now, October is on pace to being one of the warmest in our records, with little hope for any pattern change. I know that this post doesn't really have anything to do with the article Brett posted. I have just been down lately because of the porspect of every winter being like these past few, and I wanted to share it.

Reply: I know how you feel! Brett

Travis,

From the map you linked - California was in the 36% percentile (41/113 years) and was called "normal" by NOAA. Nearly every single weather station in the state reported below normal temperatures, some by as much as eight degrees. September is normally our best month at the beach here in Northern California and this year was cold. And there is no valid reason for NCDC not to archive their past predictions and keep them available on the web site. That is the only way to verify the accuracy of their models.

No one said anything about a conspiracy, just intellectual dishonesty and incompetence by their press department.

cbmclean: I feel your pain also as I live in the mountains of North Carolina. I know it may not be any consolation but the chances of a colder winter for the East usually happen when you have an above average fall which keeps the Atlantic and Gulf warmer. We shall see with the seasonal transition as we have had warm falls recently and warm winters to follow. The only good thing right now looks like the fact that NOAA is predicting a warm winter. Their track record is abysmal and usually will do the opposite of what they predict. I guess this could be the one time they get it correct.

Rob and Tom have a point. As scientists, we must never have "beliefs". Our only concern should be to determine the truth - which means examining objectively every side of a problem. As soon as we formulate beliefs, we put ourselves in a position of having to defend them. They influence our analysis of the problem in every way - the way we interpret data, the structure of our computer models, and the kind of data that we utilize in our analyses.
The studies of Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that the closed-mindedness of scientists who are comfortable in their own paradigm reaches to the level of the subconscious. Their minds simply cannot process results that oppose their beliefs.

Robert C,

It's not necessarily true that our fall warmth has nothing to do with AGW. The fact that the La Nina is causing a persistant high pressure zone over the east may not be directly caused by AGW, but it is entirely possible that resulting temperatures are getting slightly warmer than they otherwise would have been. For example, here in North Carolina, we've had previous warm falls and winters caused by La Ninas, but this October is shaping up to be one of the warmest in our records.
Of course, this is just a hypothesis, but its not an unreasonable. As a side note, I have heard that some climatologists believe that AGW has changed the frequency of the ENSO cycle.

Oleg Voronov,

I'm not sure, but I think that the NOAA describe temperatre being normal, below normal or above normal by placing the states into terciles. So the 0th to the 32nd percentiles are "below normal", the 33rd to the 66th percentile are "normal" and the 67th through the 99th percentiles are "above normal."(I'm not completely sure about that distribution. Three doesn't go evenly into 100, so if you assign 33 percentiles to each tercile, you'll have one percentile left over. I'm not sure where they put that extra percentile. I'm also not sure if they go from 0th to 99th or from 1 to 100th.) Anyway, since California was int he 36th percentile, its in the low end of the second tercile and thus "normal" by NOAA's definition.

Oleg,

I'm not disputing the fact that it was cool in California. I agree that it was cooler than normal. But I can't agree with claims of intellectual dishonesty and incompetence.

On their temperature charts, anything from the 30th-70th percentile is considered normal. Anything 10th-30th is considered below normal, and anything less than 10th percentile is significantly below normal. Anything 70th-90th is above normal and anything above the 90th percentile is considered significantly above normal. NOAA has been consistent with this methodology since they adopted it to analyze zonal temperatures in 1998. Want an example? Here's the one from October 1998. I don't think it's fair to call them dishonest and incompetent when they have been doing things the same way (quite publicly) for ten years.

If you would like a copy of NCDC's forecasts, you could try e-mailing the press department and ask for copies. I don't know if they'll give them to you, but if you want the old forecasts that badly, you can give it a try.

[(A semi-aside to Brett: does Accuweather keep free and publicly-accessible archives of all their monthly and yearly forecast data for the past 10 years?)] Reply: we do have records of climate data going back that far for in house and client use.

Oleg,

After about two minutes of rummaging around on NOAA's site, I found a link to archived forecast maps. This one looks like the one you were referring to.

It looks like NOAA did indeed get the forecast wrong; but again, it doesn't look like there is any blatant dishonesty going on over at NOAA. Verify to your heart's content, and next time search a little harder.

Travis,

Thanks for setting me straight on the NOAA percentiles.

Oleg,

Do you know what the mean and standard deviation for California's temperature? I'm curious what would be the probability of a 36th percentile assuming a normal distribution.

A question for anyone who knows. Is it safe to assume that daily, monthly, yearly temperatures etc, are normally distributed?

Thanks

"Rob and Tom have a point. As scientists, we must never have "beliefs". Our only concern should be to determine the truth - which means examining objectively every side of a problem. As soon as we formulate beliefs, we put ourselves in a position of having to defend them."

All this fuss over a headline Alley didn't even write?
Reply: that's right, I came up with the headline, not Alley. Maybe I used a wrong word there, but people are looking way too much into that. Brett

cbmclean,

It has been warm in the East and for whatever reason, a stubborn and persistent high pressure system has been dominating the weather for the past couple of months. My feeling is that we are in the midst of a vicious cycle of drought begetting drought and until something occurs to change the pattern, the cycle will continue. I was hoping that September would provide some relief from the tropics (moisten the ground and help break the cycle), but the high pressure dominance simply steered everything to the south and west into Central America.

Personally, I do not know what to believe regarding global warming. I do believe something is warming the planet, but nobody knows why, at least for sure. I find it hard to believe that CO2 is the driving force.

With all respect, here is my assertion regarding CO2:

In 1970,(the middle of a well documented cold period) the atmosphere contained about 325 ppm CO2. As of 2007, that figure has increased to 383 ppm total concentration..an 18% increase. However, compared to total atmospheric concentration, that represents and increase of 58 ppm (0.0058%). Or, in other words, for every 100,000 parts of atmospheric gas, CO2 has increased by 5.8 particles. If warming is caused by CO2, it is a much stronger greenhouse gas than I ever imagined.

Please feel free to correct my math, but this seems like an extraordinarily small figure to drive such enormously large forces such as ENSO cycles and east coast high pressure systems.

Although I appreciate the concerns of all the CO2 advocates, I really believe that they are focusing on the wrong cause.

I think this article in the Wall St Journal, 10/21/2007, represents a rational and intelligent view of global warming and its effects and applications to life on this Earth, only he is able to express it a zillion times better than me. He presents a viable approach, without the "panic, live in a cave" factor. His publications are peer-reviewed and I couldn't find any obvious right-wing connections. Also, he has an informative web site.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010763&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage&ojpartner=wsj_hpp

For those of you who are panicing about global warming:

http://www.danielbbotkin.com/

Travis,

Every monthly summary headline from NOAA is sensationalist AGW hype. Look through their archives and find one that isn't. Find me the one highlighting record cold in Alaska last March.

cmbclean,

California averaged more than one degree below normal for September. That is about equal to the entire AGW warming claim for the last century. Proponents can't claim that -1 degree is "normal", but +1 degree indicates the "earth has a fever."

Ont the other hand, if they choose to use a normal gaussian distribution range of +/-1 standard deviation, the whole global warming story vanishes into the noise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

They are trying to have it both ways....

Oleg,

As I've told other people before, I don't like to debate semantics, since I feel to do so is generally unproductive and pointless. But since you insist, here's an excerpt from NOAA's January NCDC analysis:

January 2007 was the 49th warmest January in the 1895-2007 record. The preliminary nationally averaged temperature was 31.80�F (-0.11�C), which was 0.94�F (0.52�C) above the 1901-2000 (20th century) mean.

If you think mentioning that January was the 49th warmest in the past 113 years is sensationalist AGW hype, then there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. Oh, and by the way, from the March analysis, about 1/3 down the page:

Alaska had its third coldest March on record, with a temperature 12.5 degrees F (6.9 degrees C) cooler than average. Also, 40 new daily record-low temperatures were tied, or broken, during March throughout the state.

You asked. Again, please look harder before complaining next time.

Oleg,

I have to disagree with you. A one degree negative anomoly in one state over one month is completely different from a one degree positive anomaly over large portions of the globe over the course of one century. The "sample size" is so much larger in both temporal and spatial extent, which means that the 1 degree positive deviation from the mean is much more significant than the 1 degree negative deiation over California.

Travis,

I mention "sensationalist headlines" and you respond with archives and buried text. The vast majority of newspaper reporters never read past the headlines - which is exactly the effect the NOAA news department is trying to create month after month. They have been very successful.

cmbclean,

It has been cold here on the west coast for two months now. Statistical games will not change this.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/MonthTDeptUS.png
http://hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Sep07TDeptUS.png

You know what struck me about this?

Dr. Alley states implicitly that "WE" know what Co2 does in warming the atmosphere and that "WE" have seen the temp increases just as "WE" predicted (paraphrased here people). He then goes on to state that no, the results are not perfect, but "THEY" have come to the conclusion that the problem is SO complex.

This troubles me. Why would it trouble me? Because I get the distinct feeling that the entirety of the science is being pushed in one certain direction as though the results are a foregone conclusion to the question. That, in, and of itself, should raise a big red flag to everyone including those that buy into the AGW mantra.

Oleg,

You want headlines? Fine. Here are three of this year's monthly headlines quoted DIRECTLY from NCDC's website:

GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR JANUARY HIGHEST ON RECORD, U.S. TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR MONTH

U.S. WINTER TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE
GLOBAL DECEMBER-FEBRUARY TEMPERATURE WARMEST ON RECORD

APRIL TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR U.S. EARLY APRIL COLD OUTBREAK, STRONG NOR'EASTER, DROUGHT NOTABLE GLOBAL APRIL SURFACE TEMPERATURE THIRD WARMEST ON RECORD

Headline #1: starts by mentioning the global record--rightfully so--and then that U.S. temps were average. Average U.S. temps it not sensationalist.

Headline #2: Mixing things up, it says first that once again U.S. temps are average, then mentions the global record-warm winter second. Again, average U.S. temperatures are not sensationalist, and the record-warm "winter" season globally might be something worthy of note.

Headline #3: Starts by mentioning average U.S. temperatures, then by mentioning an outbreak of colder temperatures, and only AFTER that do they mention anything about warm temperatures--third warmest April globally. Once again, putting average U.S. temperatures at the front of the headline is not sensationalist.

So a reporter would read the first line of each of these three report and see the following: record global temps in January