Thursday 7 February 2008

Hottest January on record in Australia. Coldest global average for 50 years.

Headlines in Australia loudly proclaimed the news that Australia had recorded its highest average January temperature on record. No surprise there from the Climate Useful Idiots of the mainstream media.

Reports of Australia's coldest June since 1950 are but a distant memory.

From the SMH report:
Sydney's daytime January temperature was right on average at 25.9 degrees thanks to easterly summer winds, but night-time temperatures were almost two degrees up at 20.3 degrees.
Sooooo...it pissed with rain all month flooding vast parts of the country. What's the effect of that? It increases minimum temperatures. Note that the daily maximum is right on the average. Across the two the overall average is up.

If global warming causes daily highs to stay the same, overnight lows to increase, causes it to piss with rain which fertilises all those CO2 enriched crops then I have only one thing to say.

I want more of that.

How did Australia's rain-induced warm January stack up against the rest of the world?
January posted a -.08°C near global anomaly between -70S and 82.5N latitude (the viewshed of the satellite sounder). That makes it the coldest month since January 2000, and the 2nd coldest January for the planet in 15 years. Both northern and southern hemispheres posted negative anomalies of -.120°C and -.038°C respectively, happening for the first time since January 2000.
Here are some headlines from various countries facing the 'planetary emergency' of global warming. All are from recent weeks.

Mumbai, India - At 9.4 degrees, city experiences second coldest night in 46 years

China - China Experiencing Coldest Winter in 100 Years, Will Media Notice?

Pakistan
- Turkmen leader chides weather official - "Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has scolded his top meteorology official for failing to provide accurate weather forecasts about a cold snap gripping the country. Turkmenistan is struggling to survive the coldest winter in 40 years which has frozen up parts of the Caspian Sea and blanketed its deserts with ice and snow."

Alaska - Brrrrr. Near-record cold chills Interior Alaska

Global warming's main effect is on minimum temperatures, which it raises thus raising the overall average temperature. These record colds simply shouldn't be happening.

If anyone is taking any notice I'd suggest that 1998 is starting to look like a long-term high point that won't be challenged for some time to come.

(Nothing Follows)


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You claim repeatedly to be a terribly clever fellow, with a stupendously high IQ, and yet you repeatedly fail to understand that trends can't be derived from outliers. Sensible people look at five year running averages. That way, the effect of the huge El Niño of 1998 and any brief cold spells do not fool people into thinking a new trend is being set.

The average temperature of 1998 has since been exceeded, in 2005, so your final sentence is way out of date.

RONALD said...

THE SCIENCE SEEMS TO SAY, CLIMATE IS CHANGING. IT CAN CHANGE TO EITHER HOT OR COLD. WITH DECADES LONG SWINGS IN EITHER DIRECTION. THEN IT WILL GET STUCK IN ONE PATTERN FOR A LONG LONG TIME. FROM MY READING OF; {RICHARD ALLEY'S TWO MILE TIME MACHINE" FURTHER; WHY THEY TELL US: "THE SEAS WILL RISE SUCH AND SUCH IF ALL THE ICE MELTS", IS BEYOND ME. THAT WOULD TAKE LONGER THAN ALL THE TIME WE'VE RACKED UP AS A "CIVILIZED" SPECIES. KINDA STUPID. BUT NOT AS STUPID AS THINKING YOU CAN CHANGE THE CLIMATE OF A PLANET. WHEN YOU CAN'T EVEN SUPPLY DRINKING WATER TO EVERYBODY.

Jack Lacton said...

Fudgie,

Your statement re outliers only holds true if the average of a series stays more or less constant.

If the average of any series is increasing then the statistical likelihood of records being set at the low end of the range become increasingly unlikely.

Myrddin Seren said...

Well as a probably near-irrelevant outlier, I live in Sydney and I don't recall any particular necessity to have had the air-con hammering away this January like usual ?

The electricity bill is waiting to be opened though, and we will see if fiscal reality matches perception !

Seemed pretty mild to me and no big January bush fire panics ( we live at the edge of a national park ). The daughters in the west-facing bedrooms not howling about the unbearable heat EVERY night in Jan.

So it sure didn't FEEL like an 'average' Sydney January....?

Jack Lacton said...

Kevo,

Spot on.

I don't know anyone who thinks that January was up to average let alone warmer than usual.

Anonymous said...

I'm really amused to see that you think your own perception of how January felt to you in Australia is in any way a valuable measure of how much the world is warming. Again and again you try to conflate local temperatures with global phenomena. Australia is not the world. Nor is the UK but here we've had a spectacularly mild January, including the record for warmest January night being smashed. 12°C as a January night time low is very very unusual. What all this means is not clear until someone calculates the global average temperature for January. And that will only be really informative when it forms part of a multi-year running mean of global temperatures.

My statement that you can't derive a trend from outliers remains absolutely true no matter what the change in the trend. That's basic statistics.

On a planet where the range of temperatures in a given year is of the order of 100°C, the global average rising by 0.2°C a decade doesn't actually make a massive difference to the probability of a low record being set in a particular region.

Do you genuinely not understand statistics, or are you just trying to kid yourself and others so you can believe that the world is not warming?

sfw said...

Victoria had a slightly cooler Jan than normal, I would like to see the data that thclaim was based on, Any idea on where to find it?

Jack Lacton said...

Ah, Fudgie, I think it's you who might not have a handle on basic statistics.

The probability of an event occurring outside two standard deviations is affected by a rising mean value.

Anonymous said...

Yes, fucky, that's right. But how much is it affected when the change in the mean is much smaller than two standard deviations? That's the question you need to answer.