chubbs

You can't understand Chester County's recent climate history if you don't account for station moves at Coatesville and West Chester. Easier to spot the cooling associated with moves from built-up towns---> less built-up sites, by separating before- and after-move portions of the station records. The moves are easily identified by the difference in the timing of move-related cooling: Coatesville cooled between 1945 and 1948; while, West Chester cooled in 1970. NOAA's scientific approach, using raw data from additional stations, confirms that the move-related cooling is spurious.

You are going to be the last guy to realize its warming in Chester County. Warming is clear as can be in the raw Chester County data. If you are willing to look at it carefully.

August's ERA5 water precipitable water chart from Ben Noll. The chart is similar to previous months with moisture well-above pre-nino levels, continuing the relatively rapid rise in moisture over the past 10-15 years. The nino infuence should start to wane soon. We'll see if moisture drops back to pre-nino levels like most ninas; or, stays elevated like the 2015/16 nino.

2023, 2010 and 1973 below, we've come a long way just in the past 10-15 years.

This nino has produced August UAH6 anomalies, this year and last, that are much higher than the previous high of 0.38 in August 1998 and even higher relative to recent Augusts. With the notable exception of 1998, enso effects on UAH6 have generally been weak in August and other summer month; but, this nino has maintained high UAH6 values through 2 summers. The $64 question is where will be next August, when nino effects are completely washed out.

Surface melt balance anomaly for Arctic ice caps relative to 1980-2010. The grey shaded area is one standard deviation. Melt was slightly above average for Greenland and well above average for the remainder. Record losses occurred from Svalbard through Franz Joseph to the Russian High Islands, mainly in July and August, showing the warmth near the Atlantic sea ice margin. https://www.climato.uliege.be/cms/c_5855702/fr/climato-arctic

Blog from Gavin Schmidt on this paper. As one might expect, the headline is overblown. Paper contains useful paleo data, but doesn't move the ECS/ESS needle. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/08/oh-my-oh-miocene/

Temperatures this year have been slow to fall, which almost guarantees another record. Year-to-date, ERA is running 0.24C warmer than 2023, and 0.22C warmer than 2016. The remainder of 2024 would have to average 0.41C on ERA to avoid a record, i.e. close to 2016. The rest of the year will be cooler than 2023, but not that cool. In a more likely scenario, 2024 continues to run 0.22C warmer that 2016, and breaks the record by 0.05C.

Relatively clear day today gives a good view of the "swiss cheese" pack this year, which is causing area to run unusually low relative to extent. This section is near the pole ( 88-89+N).

The short answer is no

Using monthly raw data and comparing to nearby County sites it is very easy to spot when the West Chester station was shut down for several months and moved to a cooler site in 1970. The 1970 station move accounts for the bulk of the West Chester bias adjustment over the lifetime of the station. The older stations in Chester County were in much warmer locations than the stations we have today, older towns mainly, in the south and east portion of the county where people lived. Over the years stations moved to more rural sites and shifted north and west to better cover the whole county. If you assume that the Chesco monitoring network is the exactly the same today as it was 130 years ago you will be way off.

Despite the pattern change, melt indicators have remained elevated through July and August. Picking up again in the past week, per the top chart.

Below is Coatesville with a very rough adjustment for the town-->outside of town move, 2F phased in between 1946 and 48 (2 moves in that period). This single, crude, move adjustment removes most of the difference between NOAA and the raw data. The agreement isn't perfect, but you wouldn't expect it to be. Coatesville 1SW had multiple in town locations and Chescowx is 3 different sites (Coatesville 1SW, Coatesvelle 2W and East Nantmeal). Each move would have some impact on measured temperatures. There can be non-move station changes as well. With all the station moves at Coatesville and West Chester, you get a much better answer by accounting for station changes.

Area losses slowed to a crawl this week. Dropping 2024 to #5 from top 3

GISS for July was 1.21 just edging 2023 for the 14'th straight monthly record. The last 2 months have been much warmer than 2016 and any pre-2023 year. The 2023/24 nino was fast to warm last year and is slow to cool down this year.