The globe recorded its eighth warmest December since record keeping began in 1880

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The globe recorded its eighth warmest December since record keeping began in 1880, and 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated December 2009 as the 4th warmest December on record, and the year 2009 tied with 2007 as the second warmest year on record. NOAA rated December 2009 ocean temperatures as the 2nd warmest on record, next to 1997, and land temperatures as the 31st warmest on record. The anomalously cool conditions over much of northern Asian and North American land areas may be associated with the near record December snow cover extent over Northern Hemisphere land areas--2nd most on record, behind 1985. Snow cover records go back to 1967. The December global satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the 7th warmest on record, according to the University of Alabama Huntsville and RSS data sets.

Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for December, 2009. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.

One interesting note: the NASA global average temperature for 2009 was .57°C above average. NOAA's was .56°C above average. These temperatures were just .06°C below the all-time hottest year on record, 2005. The 11-year global sunspot cycle causes a variation of 0.1°C between the maximum and minimum of the solar cycle. We are currently at a deep minimum of the solar cycle, so we would have set a new global temperature record had we been at the maximum of the solar cycle. The other global temperature data set, the UK HadCRUT3 data, is not yet available for 2009. This data set is the one most often quoted by global warming skeptics, since it says that 1998 was the warmest year on record. However, HadCRUT3 fills in a huge area of missing data in the Arctic with the average temperature from the rest of the globe. This is bound to cause an underestimate of the global temperature, since the Arctic has warmed much more than the rest of the globe. The NASA and NOAA data sets fill in the missing data in the Arctic with data interpolated from the nearest stations in the Arctic, a procedure which is less likely to underestimate the global temperature.

December 2009: 14th coolest December on record for the U.S.

For the contiguous U.S., the average December temperature was 3.2°F below average, making it the 14th coolest December in the 115-year record, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The U.S. has been on quite a roller coaster of temperatures over the past three months--the nation recorded its third coldest October on record, followed by its third warmest November, followed by its 14th coolest December. The coolest December weather was in the Central U.S., where Nebraska had its eighth coolest December; Texas, Nevada, and Wyoming their ninth; and Montana and Utah their tenth coolest.

December 2009 was the 11th wettest December in U.S. history. It was a record wet month for Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland; 2nd wettest month on record for New Jersey; and the third wettest month on record for South Dakota, North Carolina, and Alabama. The Northwest U.S. was dry, with Washington experiencing its 11th driest December on record.

The year 2009: 35th warmest for the U.S.

For the entire year of 2009, it was the 35th warmest year in the contiguous U.S during the 115-year record. The coolest state was Nebraska, which had its 19th coolest year on record, and the warmest state was California, with its 16th warmest year on record. The driest state was Arizona, where 2009 ranked as the 4th driest year on record, while the wettest states were Illinois, Alabama, and Arkansas, who all had their 2nd wettest year on record.

U.S. tornado deaths: 2nd lowest on record

The year 2009 was below average for number of tornadoes, with a final tally around 1120 expected, compared to the 3-year average of 1297, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The 21 tornado deaths in 2009 was the 2nd lowest death toll in the 60-year record. Only 1986, with its 15 tornado deaths, saw fewer fatalities. The 60-year average annual death toll is 84.

U.S. drought

At the end of December, 6% of the contiguous United States was in severe-to-exceptional drought, which is well below average. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows no areas in the highest classification of drought--exceptional drought, and U.S. drought extent is close to its lowest value for the past ten years. The second highest category of drought, extreme drought, covers only a small region of northeast Arizona, and this will shrink over the remainder of January as much-needed rain falls across Arizona. About 43 percent of the contiguous United States had moderately-to-extremely wet conditions at the end of December, according to the Palmer Index (a well-known index that measures both drought intensity and wet spell intensity). This footprint is significantly larger than the long-term average.

Average U.S. fire activity in 2009

Significant fire activity occurred early in 2009, but wetter conditions across many parts of the nation as the year progressed, coupled with effective fire management, helped to restrain fire activity by mid-year. Despite the largest fire in Los Angeles County's (California) recorded history (Station fire), by the end of August the nationwide acreage burned by wildfire was very near the 2000 - 2009 average, and thereafter declined below average. Based upon data provided by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), fire activity in 2009 ranked fifth highest (sixth lowest) out of the past decade in terms of number of fires, about 1 percent below the 2000 - 2008 average. Acres burned in 2009 were 14.5 percent below the 2000 - 2008 average, ranking seventh highest (fourth lowest) since 2000. Average fire size also ranked seventh highest out of the 2000 - 2009 period, at about 14 percent below average.

Strong El Niño conditions continue

Strong El Niño conditions continue over the tropical Eastern Pacific. Ocean temperatures in the area 5°N - 5°S, 120°W - 170°W, also called the "Niña 3.4 region", were at 1.6°C above average on January 10, just above the 1.5°C threshold for a strong El Niño, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The strength of El Niño has been roughly constant for the 9 weeks ending January 10. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is maintaining an El Niño Advisory. Most of the El Niño models forecast that El Niño has peaked and will gradually weaken. Most of the models predict that El Niño conditions will last into early summer, but cross the threshold into neutral territory by the height of hurricane season.

December sea ice extent in the Arctic 4th lowest on record

December 2009 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent was the 4th lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979 and slightly below December 2008 levels, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Only 2005, 2006, and 2007 saw lower December arctic sea ice extent. The weather pattern over the Arctic in December 2009 featured a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation (AO). This pattern tends to slow the winds that typically flush large amounts of sea ice out of the Arctic between Greenland and Iceland. In this way, a negative AO could help retain some the second- and third-year ice through the winter, and potentially rebuild some of the older, multi-year ice that has been lost over the past few years. However, the AO has increased significantly in January, and it is unclear what the net effect of the AO on sea ice transported out of the Arctic this winter will be.

Next post

I'm at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta, Georgia, and will be making my next post from Atlanta on Tuesday.

Jeff Masters

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[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Climate and weather are not the same thing, Stephen!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Climate and weather are not the same thing, Stephen!

Maybe Dr. Jeff Masters could help you through this maze...

Warm Cold Warm Cold

You may remember that early last winter it was cold in the eastern half of the United States. There was a lot of press about what the cold weather implied about global warming. I wrote a series of blogs last year that are:

Cold in a Warm World

Cold in the East

Last Year and This Year

Last Year and This Year – and the Next Big Story?

I have started teaching again. One of things we do in the beginning of the class we talk about what people already know about global warming. Two of the students raised the issue of “what’s in name?” That is, if it is called “global warming,” then people are confused when it is not, always, uniformly warmer all the time. (Might remember this discussion as well.)

As I stand in front of these students prattling on, I am always thinking of ways to explore, challenge, and expose ideas. Early on, we talk about the role of greenhouse gases in the natural climate of the Earth. We have known since, at least, 1800 that water vapor and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases that make the Earth “warm.” That is, if you take away these gases which act like blankets and hold the Sun’s energy near the surface of the Earth for a while, then the Earth would be MUCH colder – say, about zero degrees Fahrenheit. Restating this, without the atmosphere the surface of the Earth would be cold. (Spencer Weart’s great history) Water is about two thirds of the greenhouse warming.

One could take from this fact, and it is not often I use the word “fact,” – one could take from this fact, that there is a strong physical reason that works to take the Earth towards this “equilibrium” temperature. Think of it this way, suppose you have a pot of boiling fresh organic chicken broth on the stove. Once you get the pot boiling, if you want to keep it boiling then you have to keep adding a little heat to the bottom of the pot. If you turn off the heat, then the pot stops boiling. This loss of energy which works to stop the boiling is always occurring, and you are always adding energy through the burner to counter this loss. For the Earth, the Sun is the burner, the source of energy, and the Earth is always cooling to get rid of this energy. It’s a little like a spring trying to pull the Earth’s temperature to, on the average, about zero degrees Fahrenheit. (A question for the reader: what is the impact of putting a top on the pot?)

If you were to turn off the Sun, then the Earth would get cold fast. That is what happens when winter comes to the poles. In the north, throughout October and November, the North Pole starts to cool. The Earth emits radiation to space. Since the heating from the Sun is totally absent at this time, it can get far colder than that equilibrium temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere and the oceans continue to transport heat to the north, but they can’t keep up. This process of cooling at the poles in the winter is a fact of the planet that will continue even as greenhouse gases build up.

This is where weather comes into play. We have this cold air up towards the North Pole. The atmosphere and the ocean have many different types of - I will call them features - features that have characteristic types of motion associated with them. An example of such a feature is a hurricane, which has closed circulation around an eye. The hurricane then moves around, but pretty much no matter how it bounces around for a week or two, after a while the hurricane heads out to the north. Really they head off to the pole, and north or south depends on which hemisphere. What the hurricane does is transport heat from the tropics to the pole, and that is what the atmosphere and oceans do all the time. They are trying to reduce the contrast between warm and cold.

The hurricane is an example of a dynamical feature. There are many more dynamical features and many of them behave like waves. A hurricane behaves more like a spinning top; it’s a vortex. The atmosphere is full of waves, and professors like me torment students of meteorology with mathematical descriptions of these waves. There are many ways that waves come into being, but one way is because of air flowing over mountain ranges. You can imagine, more intuitively, a stream of water flowing over a rock. I have tried to convey this idea of a wave in the figure below.

Figure 1: A schematic picture that represents a wave in temperature. There are hot and cold parts of the wave. Do other climate bloggers draw such compelling figures?

What I have drawn with the dashed line is a “small” wave, perhaps a wave that would form in October. Then I draw, with the solid line, a bigger wave, perhaps a wave of December or January. These waves are always growing and decaying, sometimes moving a little bit to the east and the west. If we label the graph so that the bottom is the south, the top is the north, the left hand side is west and the right hand side is east, then we can imagine North America siting under this wave. If the left hand side is the Pacific Ocean and the right hand side is the Atlantic Ocean, then it sets up the story. If the wave grows in the west, the warm air pushes up to the north towards the pole, and the cold air is displaced south into the United States. This is not some random, made up thing, because 1) there are the Rocky Mountains that help make the wave, 2) the way the Earth rotates makes the air flow from west to east, 3) northern part of North America, we call it Canada here in the South, gets cold because the Sun is down, and 4) the Pacific Ocean starts to look warm as the continent starts to get cold.

If I hear people talking about how cold it is in the east of the U.S., I ask them to, using Wunderground.com of course, to look at what is going on in California and Alaska. If it is cold in the East, then usually it is warm in the West. And if this wave gets big enough, then it pushes up towards to pole, and it looks warm in the north, and the air that is displaced to the South, off the pole, looks cold. And to weak-kneed academics from Florida State University, it might look VERY cold. (What’s going on at Florida State? Must be all of that money that goes to cushy climate scientists.)

Even if there is a lot of carbon dioxide it still gets cold when the Sun goes down at the poles, and that cold air can get pushed down away from the pole, and there is still winter. In fact, if that push of air towards the pole is especially vigorous, then the cold air can get pushed to new places, and we have a record cold. If you are going to play the “record game,” look for new highs that might be paired with the new lows. (Jerry Meehl and colleagues did this recently, many, many more new highs. They concluded that it’s getting warmer.)

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/article.html

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

OMG. When will they ever stop this nonsense?

[ready4ONE 5,400]

OMG. When will they ever stop this nonsense?