Climate Change We Can All Believe In

And now for something completely different:

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs: a perfect food storm
Opens September 18



Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The forecast calls for implausibility
N.Y. Times: A Yummy Forecast
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Fairly inventive and exceedingly manic
Bob Mondello, NPR: Puts Fun In The Forecast
L. A. Times: Sun won't shine too bright for 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'
Boston Globe: A bit bland, but still fun
Orlando Sentinel: Unexpected delight
Miami Herald: Do not see without eating first
UK Telegraph: 4 stars

August 2009 Second Warmest on Record Globally Global Ocean and Southern Hemisphere Temperatures Break Records

Images (click to enlarge): August 2009 global temperature departures from normal, history since 1880, and table of departures by hemisphere from National Climatic Data Center

The National Climatic Data Center preliminary analysis for August 2009, released within the last 2 hours, shows that this was the second warmest August on record globally, and the warmest for both the world's oceans and the Southern Hemisphere (land and ocean combined).

Here are some highlights for the month:

• Global land and ocean combined average temperature: 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th Century average, 2nd warmest August in history behind 1998. The last below-average August was in 1978.
• Ocean temperature alone: 0.57°C (1.03°F) above average, warmest August ever
  
• Southern Hemisphere land alone and total Hemisphere: warmest August ever

For the season June-August (summer in Northern Hemisphere):

• Global land and ocean combined average temperature: 3rd warmest on record
• Ocean temperature alone: warmest on record

For the year to date, the combined land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2003 as the 5th warmest January-August on record.

WaPo Blog Policy Promotes Climate Astroturfing

One of the unintended consequences of commercialized blogging is that it creates whole new areas of conflict of interest for the traditional media attempting to make the transition to the online world. The high-fiber media have always been subject to the possible interference between the business side and the editorial side of publishing. In a recent example, WaPo publisher Katharine Weymouth absolutely, positively, in no way interfered with an article being written for the newspaper's Sunday magazine:
Post Magazine Killed 'Depressing' Story.
No. Really. All just a coincidence.

The online arena provides a new dimension, however. Among the usual denialist rants in response to a recent pathetic Climate Despot style hack job at the online WaPo's weather blog was this little fact-free gem by one "gpp1111" (spelling and grammar preserved):

What is of most concern is how skeptics of the global warming theory are treated. I have in the past made comments on blogs only to find that people had researched who I was. They don't answer my questions or debate the facts, what they want to know is who is making the argument. I have been accused of being paid by the fossil fuel companies (I wish I was), many supporters of the theory seem to think any contrarians must have alterior motives (than just the truth). To be called Holocaust deniers, flatlanders and such, using disparaging comments, ad hominem attacks, must be similar to what other skeptics experienced in 1930's Germany, skeptics of you know who. Have not noteable scientists who support the theory called for Nuremburg style trials. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/23/17350/3999/231/540815 Science is not supposed to have consensus. Consensus is a political term. Many/most scientific discoveries have come from contrarians. It is dangerous to promote consensus on any subject by simply savaging your opponents (or trying to do so). Fortunately the truth has its own power. Mother Nature is weighing in on the subject. Some alarmists are now agreeing that temperatures might fall for the next 20 years (but they say this gives humanity more time to prepare for the inevitable warming and just wait and see how hot it is going to get once the 20 years of cooling is over). The past ten years of cooling temperatures show that "natural forces" are more powerful than man made ones. It never crosses the alarmists minds that perhaps these same natural forces that are making the earth cooler also made it warmer from the late 70s to the 90s. Delaying cap and trade legislation now is critical because it will be even more difficult in the future to pass it when cooler temperatures (and the resulting shorter growing season) are felt by people throughout the globe. www.isthereglobalwarming.com

The initials gpp are fairly generic, but some determined Googling against the referenced web site along with a good memory for names and an extensive bookmark list turned up some interesting connections, especially a comment earlier this year at Chris Mooney's Intersection blog:

Re Geoffrey Pohanka

Mr. Pohankas’ web site, which his name linked to, doesn’t identify him. However, anyone living in the Washington DC area is familiar with the name Pohanka, which is a family that owns a number of automobile dealerships in the area. And guess what, Mr. Pohanka is the president of the Pohanka Lexus auto dealership and a member of the Pohanka family that owns these dealerships.

Mr. Pohanka, as one whose family is heavily invested in the automotive dealership industry, thus has a vested interest in denying global warming as the automobile industry is one of the major contributors to the production of carbon dioxide and other carbon emissions. Because of course, measures to alleviate such production will probably have a negative effect on that industry. Nice try Mr. Pohanka but its pretty hard to hide from Google.

Apparently Pohanka had no problem appearing in public when he was recently interviewed on the PBS Nightly Business Report, where he was identified as the president of Pohanka Automotive Group, whose 14 dealerships in the Washington, DC area had sold 800 cars under the Cash for Clunkers program and was awaiting $3 million from the government in payments.

Under the WaPo's "free speech" policy, gpp1111 is just another grassroots guy/gal from Woodbridge or Wherever, whereas in reality he has a vested interest in policies that allow him to sell more high-profit SUVs and trucks while he feeds at the public trough for stimulus money and the WaPo rakes in more revenue (originally typed "profits" here, but braincheck overruled, considering the state of the publishing business) from one of its major remaining advertisers.

Nothing to see here, folks, just free speech at work.

U.S. Has 30th Coolest August, 34th Coolest Summer

Images (click to enlarge): August and summer 2009 average temperature ranks from National Climatic Data Center

For other seasonal weather posts, see here.

The National Climatic Data Center posted its preliminary analysis of August temperatures on Thursday. Continuing a trend of cooler-than-average temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast, August was the 30th coolest on record, and meteorological summer (June-August) was the 34th coolest. Unlike July, however, when records were set in 6 states, no statewide records were set. The coolest states relative to average were:

Missouri 11th coolest
Kansas 12 coolest

On the other hand, several Northeastern states were in the top 10 warmest:

Delaware 8th warmest
New Jersey 8th warmest
Maine 9th warmest
Rhode Island 10th warmest
Connecticut 10th warmest

For the U.S. as a whole, the temperature of 72.2°F was 0.6°F below the 20th Century average.

The summer average of 71.7°F was 0.4°F below the 20th Century average. In the top 10 coolest summer category were:

Michigan 5th coolest
Wisconsin 7th coolest
Minnesota 7th coolest
South Dakota 7th coolest
Nebraska 8th coolest
Iowa 9th coolest

In the top 10 warmest category:

Florida 4th warmest
Washington 8th warmest
Texas 9th warmest

Weather Channel Founder Dies

Frank Batten, Sr., who founded The Weather Channel in 1982, died this morning in Norfolk at age 82. The cable TV network, which overcame major skepticism and near-bankruptcy in its early years, was sold last year to a consortium including NBC Universal for about $3.5 billion.

Obituaries:
The Weather Channel
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
Hampton Roads Daily Press
Richmond Times-Dispatch
N.Y. Times
L.A. Times
AP
Bloomberg
WSJ

At least 13 hours after the news first appeared, the WaPo is getting right on it:

We'll get an obituary up as soon as we can get one prepared.

Highest Arctic Temperatures in 2000 Years

Images (click to enlarge):

• 2000 years of Arctic temperatures from Science, via University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
• Changes in Earth-Sun distance during Arctic summer over time, from National Science Foundation

Midnight Update: Naturally, this research is too important to escape a hatchet job by the anti-science Anthony Wassup site. We don't go there or provide links, because the computer needs to get a tetanus shot after dipping in that bilge. However, the intrepid Tamino is already on the case.

Original post:
A new study published in today's issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science shows that current Arctic temperatures are the highest in the past 2000 years. Based on an analysis of lake sediments and comparisons with previous studies of ice cores and tree rings, the researchers extended the previous record of Arctic climate from 400 years to 2000 years in the past. They found that over the 1900 years prior to the 20th Century, there was a slow rate of cooling in the Arctic. This cooling is consistent with the relationship between small changes in the tilt of Earth's axis and its orbit around the sun. Over the last 7000 years, this has caused Earth's closest approach to the sun to shift from September to January. As a result, the intensity of sunlight in the Arctic summer has been slightly reduced, producing the cooling trend. Over the 20th Century, however, that trend has been overcome by warming which has generated temperatures that are now higher than in the preceding 1900 years. By the year 2000, average Arctic temperatures were 1.4° C (2.5° F) above where they would otherwise have been. Four out of the five warmest decades in the last 2000 years occurred in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000.

The paper's abstract:

The temperature history of the first millennium C.E. is sparsely documented, especially in the Arctic. We present a synthesis of decadally resolved proxy temperature records from poleward of 60°N covering the past 2000 years, which indicates that a pervasive cooling in progress 2000 years ago continued through the Middle Ages and into the Little Ice Age. A 2000-year transient climate simulation with the Community Climate System Model shows the same temperature sensitivity to changes in insolation as does our proxy reconstruction, supporting the inference that this long-term trend was caused by the steady orbitally driven reduction in summer insolation. The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.

The paper has generated considerable press interest, including:

• BBC News, Arctic 'warmest in 2,000 years'
• AP, Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia
  
• Reuters, Arctic now warmest in 2000 years, researchers say
  
• National Geographic, Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says
• McClatchy Newspapers, Warming Arctic follows 1,900 years of cooling, scientists find
• UK Guardian, Global warming has made Arctic summers hottest for 2,000 years
• UK Telegraph, Global warming has reversed 2,000 years of cooling in the Arctic
  
• USA Today, Arctic temperatures hit 2,000-year high
• Bloomberg, Arctic’s 2,000-Year Cooling Ended With Coal Burning, Ice Shows
• WaPo, Emissions Linked to End of 2,000-Year Arctic Trend

Austin Hits Century Mark Again, 1 Short of Yearly Record

For other record temperature posts, see:
Record Heat
Record Cold

PM Update: Today's highs:

Austin Mabry     101°
Austin Bergstrom  98°
San Antonio       96° 
Del Rio           96° 

Original post:
After reaching "only" 98° yesterday, the temperature at Austin (Camp Mabry), Texas hit a higher-than-forecast 100° by 3 pm CDT today. This is the 68th 100°+ day so far this year, just 1 short of the annual record. The latest date for a 100° temperature in Austin was October 2, 1938. Highs in the mid 90s are forecast for the area on Friday.