Well it’s a little more complicated than that, but this sort of “presentation”, by which I mean this Pit topic, and the aborted other efforts in GD, does not lend itself to clarity, nor can we use images with ease here, making it problematic to actually do Science! That being said …
The fact that the winter trend for much of the US has become cooling, doesn’t mean much for a global warming argument. (We will see this shortly).
So even if US winters were showing a warming trend, that wouldn’t matter in the great global warming debate. So does the US data even matter in any case? It seems to depend on what somebody thinks the data is showing us. If it seems to go against global warming, it doesn’t matter. But if it seems to show warming, then it’s evidence.
I already debunked their nonsense “study” several times, but to make it easy to quote I will remove most of it from the tags while reposting it from elsewhere
—begin quote–
The multiple GISS maps are an obvious counter to the false claims climatecentral makes about THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES, which is obvious from their “paper” on the matter.
They claim winters are warming faster than any other season. The GISS data shows this is false.
The last 25 years for winter, can be seen in this map.
The last 25 years for summer can be seen in this map Nobody said anything about Louisiana, and the map shows the entire world. I’m using it to check climatecentral, and it clearly shows how they try to twist the facts, and present “winters are warming faster than any other season in the US”. Which is false.
Even the 30 year trend shows this clearly. (and also shows boreal winter not warming as much as boreal summer, globally)
30 year winter trend
30 year summer trend
I’m not making a claim, I am debunking climatecentral, who claims winters are warming even faster, for the US. There “paper” is both false, as well as misleading. The GISS maps clearly show this.
If you know of a blog that has discussed this, especially in regards to the climatecentral paper, please link to it, or if you fear giving them traffic, send it by PM.
I know of no blogs discussing either the climatecentral nonsense, or the boreal winter trends.
The lack of any real claims makes it hard to even know what would falsify anything they claim.
------------- end quoted material from another thread-------------
Here’s another long post about the same climatecentral paper (clipped to avoid clutter, it’s a long post full of science and shit like that)
The climatecentral “study” isn’t a peer reviewed scientific paper, but that doesn’t stop anyone from using it over and over, while trying to persuade everyone that even though they are experiencing the coldest winter ever, winters are warming. It is used to persuade that even with winters obviously getting much much worse, they are in fact warming faster than any other season. This is pure bullshit, and it’s easy to debunk bullshit. Because the data shows how wrong their bullshit actually is.
Since I already showed three times the problem with their claim, would it matter to do so once again? Of course not.
Both your links to GISS maps show nothing about the trends, but you get points for at least trying.
Seriously? You haven’t read or followed the data, that I have posted at least as dozen times now? You seriously don’t know at this point? The multitude of science reports and media stories about this? Over a dozen scientific papers? I just don’t get this. Do you think I just made this up? IT IS WHAT THE DATA SHOWS.
No, and that’s what makes it so interesting. If it was the occasional winter, or even limited to a small area, some winter cooling trend would mean little, except perhaps that we are observing local climate change somewhere. It would be quicker to list where winter warming is NOT observed, than to list all regions effected by more severe winters. By that, we mean colder winters, more snow, early cold, late cold, and long lasting extreme cold periods, during winter. It’s an actual thing, nobody has made it up
It’s that it is so extreme, so much cooling that it shows up clearly in the global data, including the annual mean, that makes it important. It actually means something. That’s why there are a hundred papers or more about it now. Science can’t just ignore it.
Once again, even if I show you that the last two decades for most of the US is trending colder, it won’t matter. It gets handwaved away as “just local cooling, not global”. Which is why I focus on the NH trends, which actually do effect the global mean. It’s very easy to show, but experience has taught me, it won’t matter to those who already think they know everything.
But since I know some people are reading who have open minds, here we go once more.
The short version: NH winters (boreal winter) are trending colder, in large areas. This is unexpected. It is not predicted by theory or models (aside from recent forecast models, like the sCast used by Cohen)
The trends Cohen et al. first noted were from 1988-2006, or 1989-2007, for the early papers. The 2012 and 2013 and 2014 papers use more recent data, but none of them include the 2014 winter yet. I noticed the trends in 2010, using 1990-2010, But subsequent years did little to change them, the NH winters are still trending colder. Anyone can see this using the available tools, like the NCDC global data, GISS or the ClimateReanalyzer tools.
As the data shows, the arctic regions are still warming, and the tropics show little trend for boreal winters. But the winter months, D-J-F all show trends so strong they change the annual mean figures. You can see this on the GISS maps
Feb starts in 1995
Jan starts in 2001, as does December, (but that does not include 2014 data yet)
Remember that the SH land and ocean trend is still warming, so those winter months are so much COLDER they pull the entire monthly global data down, making the trend negative. This is nothing short of a “what the fuck” sort of realization, for the climate scientist. Because CO2 levels rose a lot in the last two decades, and there were no big volcanoes, and the measure optical depth (pollution blocking sunlight) doesn’t explain it.
It’s why Cohen and others came up with new theories, and stated clearly this behavior “diverges” from the climate models. That we still see people insisting it isn’t happening, that’s just denial.
So what year does the boreal winter trend cause the global mean to be negative? 1997-2014 (winter only)
What is the period when the winter trend brings the annual mean down so much, we see cooling?
It was 2002-2013, which is seen best by looking at the winter trend, then the annual
BOOM! There it is.
But, since this is Science! note that since 2014 was a very warm year (not the warmest however), the 2002-2014 trend is positive!.
This is due to both the annual mean for 2014 being warmer, as well as how these short trend periods are sensitive to the end year for the trend.
If you have been actually looking at the GISS maps, and following this by now complicated thread, you might already have guessed it was probably the winter that was warmer, changing the trend.
Showing that would take looking at all the seasons, which is a lot of effort. But what the hell, here’s the numbers, these are the trends, not anomalies.
2002-2013
- .17 winter
.00 spring
.10 summer
.04 fall
2002-2014
- .13 winter
.05 spring
.12 summer
.07 fall
So it wasn’t the winter, every season in 20104 was warmer. OMG you are still reading?
You know how rare it is to find somebody who actually gives a crap about this stuff?