Tuesday, February 23, 2010

How Unusual Is Vancouver's Current Weather?

Given that this piece by Goldstein has been given large play in Denialist circles, it may be useful to find a slightly more knowledgeable source in response:

This is a highly unusual winter, warmer than most would expect from a moderate El Nino event. So far this year, every single day in Vancouver has been warmer than "normal", using the Environment Canada definition of normal. Every day in January exceeded the 1971-2000 January mean temperature is 3.3 deg C. So far, every day in February has exceeded the 1971-2000 February mean temperature of 4.8 deg C. When the Canadian athletes paraded into the snowy white BC Place last night, it was 9 degrees and raining.

The above was written on the 13th, by the way. Looks like the upcoming week will also be well above Feb. averages.

22 comments:

Tof KW said...

Except the Sun got it right (I know it's shocking to type that) a singular weather event, or even an entire season within a specific geographic area, is not an accurate indicator of climate change - and neither side should be doing this.

However when you observe mean global temperatures increasing year, after year, after year ...well that's all just a big envirofascist lie used in order to subvert all humanity under the socialist flag.

Tof KW said...

...And an excuse for the evil east to drill into Albertans wallets.

Just thought I'd get all those arguments out of the way.

The Mound of Sound said...

I thought it wasn't El Nino at all but the big guy's ugly stepsister, La Nina. When she shows up we're in for a warm, extremely wet winter. We call the wet weather fronts that come out of the central Pacific/Hawaii region the "Pineapple Express." This year's La Nina is apparently one for the books, stretching the entire width of the Pacific. Both Ninos and Ninas seem to be increasing in intensity and frequency. Their impact is genuinely global.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Except, TofKW.. mean global temperatures aren't necessarily increasing year after year, after year..

No less an authority than Dr. Phil Jones conceded to as much.

More recently, we're told that predictions of sea level increases are also uncertain and a major report which was relied upon by the IPCC has been withdrawn due to factual errors that "undermined the study's conclusion".

bigcitylib said...

R.G.,

That's bullshit and you know it.

Anonymous said...

So now weather is climate?

You warmongers are so confused and confusing.

Unknown said...

I actually don't think Harvie does know it. I think he's really that dumb.
And he credulously believes whoever told him that a paper published after the IPCC report was published, was somehow included in the IPCC report.

Unknown said...

"Except the Sun got it right ..."

No, he didn't. He clearly suggested that the weather in Vancouver wasn't unusual:

"We whisk you to Vancouver just before the Olympics where — shocking, this — there wasn’t any snow, because, as all Canadians know, Vancouver is always buried in about, what,— a metre of the white stuff, at this time of year?"

Which is what I believe BCL was responding to.
Of course, Goldstein also slipped in a strawman by suggesting the problem was a lack of snow in Vancouver.

Gene Rayburn said...

Fred, are you drinking before noon again?

Ti-Guy said...

I actually don't think Harvie does know it. I think he's really that dumb.

I go back and forth on that.

Gerrard787 said...

A few points: weather is climate, only on a shorter timeframe.

And sea level rise is not accelerating.

The study in Church 2008 uses normal decadal variability (and mashes together two completely measurement sytems) and claims acceleration.

Shiner said...

Ti-Guy, same here. Sometimes I wonder whether the R and the G are different people.

Unknown said...

Congratulations on refuting Church's paper, Dr. Paul Dunning-Kruger. When will you be publishing?

Meanwhile, in the real world, sea-level rise certainly has accelerated.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL024826.shtml
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch05.pdf

The Mound of Sound said...

Some of us live in places where we see warming-driven climate change impacts first-hand. We don't need to be convinced. Others live in places where they're removed from the effects - at least for now. But, as the lonely lodgepole pine beetle wends its way over the Rockies into Alberta, so too are other impacts of climate change slowly spreading. Time is running out for the denialists. First tobacco/lung cancer now global warming/climate change. Once this door closes on their latest nonsense what will they do for Act 3?

Holly Stick said...

They're hoping for the Rapture to come first?

Unknown said...

I'm just hoping that the beetles will develope a taste for human flesh when they reach the other side of the Rockies.

Gerrard787 said...

Meanwhile, in the real world, sea-level rise certainly has accelerated. - Lenny

Same old report. Church claims sea level rise accelerated after 1993, conveniently when a different measurement system just came online which (inconveniently) doesn't jibe with the sea level record pre-1993 or post-1993 tidal gauge measurements. And Church never reconciles the discrepancies.

Scientific cherry-picking of the worst sort that that even if it shows what it claims to show, may well be simply decadal variability.

Unknown said...

Hi Paul,
Could you just clarify whether you're claiming that Church has committed scientific fraud, or that you have a better grasp of the issue than the lead author of the IPCC's Sea Level chapter?
Also, since nobody else seems to have corrected the record, will you be publishing your results in the near future and, if not, why not?

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

BCL.. what is bullshit? That Phil Jones acknowledged no statistically significant temperature increases in the last decade?

Or, that a recent report on sea level increases has been redadacted based upon errors in protocol. "The publication tested a model used in the Nobel-inning report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

I acknoweldge I misread the article orginally - it wasn't relied upon by the IPCC, it was an apparent utilization of the model employed by the IPCC.

Now - before anyone blows another gasket.. it might be noted that there are suggestions that the report "under-estimated" sea level increase..

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing that global warming isn't a legitimate issue.. only that strident suggestions that Vancouver, for example, is "evidence" of global warming.

I lived there for three years, some 20 years ago or better, and even then, it was not at all unusual to go through a season where snow at Cypress and Grouse was hard to come by.

The point, I guess, is that we need to take care in suggesting what we "know" to be certain.

When high-level scientists with Nature Geoscience are forced to ackowledge they are mistaken, when buffoons like Al Gore are caught, red-handed, admitting that they have exaggerated the information the have received.. it suggests that, well, maybe bloggers like, oh, BCL AND MYSELF, ought to be a little less, uh, certain about what we say is so.

Unknown said...

"That Phil Jones acknowledged no statistically significant temperature increases in the last decade?"

is not the same as:

"mean global temperatures aren't necessarily increasing year after year, after year.."

This was already explained to you at length. You continuing inability to understand is, unfortunately, not evidence that it isn't warming.

"high-level scientists with Nature Geoscience "

Heh.


"it was an apparent utilization of the model employed by the IPCC."

Where do you get this crap?

By the way, who brought the error to the attention of Siddall? Was it one of the Septic Savants from whom you apparently get your "information"?
Whadda you know, it was a couple of card-carrying members of the Global Warming Conspiracy. Aren't they supposed to be falsifying evidence and letting falacious papers slip through the peer-review?

Gerrard787 said...

Church's paper is a weak paper Lenny. Also, t has not been independently verified. Certainly the tidal gauges don't back his assertion.

The reasons for skepticism about his paper are several. His claimed acceleration occurs at the *exact* moment satellite altimetry comes into use. Coincidence?

Secondly, tidal gauges do not support the acceleration theory.

Lastly, as one weather event can not be stated to accurately represent longer timescale climate, neither is 10 years of sea level measurements sufficient to establish a trend.

Unknown said...

"Certainly the tidal gauges don't back his assertion."

Yes, they do.

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html


"His claimed acceleration occurs at the *exact* moment satellite altimetry comes into use. Coincidence? "

Wow. That's amazing. Even though we now know that tidal-gauge data also shows a similar increase, tell me Dr. Dunning-Kruger, how could a change in methodology result in a different rate of rise?

"...neither is 10 years of sea level measurements sufficient to establish a trend."

I know math is hard, but it's more than 16 years. Regardless, I haven't heard anyone claiming it's yet known whether the long term trend has changed.

Now, please answer my very simple questions you've avoided:
Are you claiming that Church has committed scientific fraud, or that you have a better grasp of the issue than the lead author of the IPCC's Sea Level chapter?
Also, since nobody else seems to have corrected the record, will you be publishing your findings in the near future and, if not, why not?