TheClimateChanger

Wow, I just noticed PIT had a gust to 54 mph at the top of the hour, without a wind advisory or even a special weather statement. I guess there is a hazardous weather outlook which notes gusts of up to 54 mph.

I mean over geologic time scales, not in the near future. CO2 levels have largely been declining naturally since the Paleocene, due to weathering and decreased volcanism/geological activity as the earth's core settles over time. Over that same interval, the climate has cooled naturally in response to the decrease in CO2 with ice ages commencing around 2.58 mya which have gradually become longer and harsher over the course of the Pleistocene. These trends would very likely continue indefinitely into the future if there was no massive release of stored carbon from human activity, until solar irradiance increased sufficiently to reverse that trend.

I ran it by Grok and he agreed with my theory, albeit maybe not to the extremes I posited. He suggests colder and longer lasting ice ages for up to the next 10 mya [again, in the absence of human activity], but nothing suggesting a total loss of the interglacial cycle.

Do you think in the absence of human activity, the planet would be destined for a near-permanent ice age in the geological future? Obviously, such an ice age could not truly be permanent, because solar irradiance is increasing over time as the sun is a main sequence star. In the very distant future, this will inevitably lead to runaway warming. But in the nearer term (next few millions of years), it seems likely that ice age conditions would become the norm. In millions of years, could the earth go from near snowball earth conditions to typical quaternary ice age conditions from Milankovitch cycles [rather than from ice age to interglacial]. Looking at the geological record, we can see, generally, a long-term cooling since the Paleocene, which coincides with a long-term decrease in carbon dioxide. This appears to be due to increased weathering and a decrease in volcanism over time. As the earth continues to age, there would continue to be fewer and fewer volcanic eruptions over time, which, in the absence of human activity, would result in continued decreases in carbon dioxide. I wonder if carbon dioxide levels would eventually drop so low that photosynthesis might cease. It looks as though the planetary trajectory is towards extreme cold and eventually extreme heat.

There are also statistical methods to correct for inhomogeneities that don't involve any explicit adjustments (kriging, pairwise homogenization).

But they can? You can just set up a controlled experiment to compare the two and determine the net bias? No need for any time travel!

And that's another reason they love the Tmax charts. They get to ignore the cooling bias of Tmax occasioned by the switch to MMTS from CRS. You guys are the real climate hoaxers!

Why don't you read a history book? Most of the old temperature records were compiled from rooftop stations in cities, often near chimneys and such, and in the late 1800s, the thermometers were sometimes housed on balconies or window cavities. I bet that automated sensor has more of a cooling bias relative to a LiG thermometer housed in a cotton-region shelter [aka Stevenson screen] than any warming bias from the surroundings.

Always the raw Tmax temperatures so they can ignore the warming bias of resetting at 5 or 6 in the afternoon in the olden days. I'm gonna guess the Tmin temperatures don't show the same trend, and Tavg in between. Also, they typically don't even bother to grid these data [which would account for changes in elevation and geospacial siting of the stations] but rather just average all of the data. Sorry, can't do that!

"Large" concrete pad. It looks like it's less than 10 square feet. There's literally nothing wrong with this.

Hmm, while the statement will probably still be true, given the recent cooldown and continued cooler weather for the next several days, it now looks like there will be a pretty substantial warmup for the last few days of the month with a couple more days in the 70s looking probable.

Small hail and gusty winds again with the showers this afternoon.

Here's an interesting recent post on RealClimate: RealClimate: Andean glaciers have shrunk more than ever before in the entire Holocene

A little glimpse into our collective future:

It sucks so bad that they are going to screw you out of record futility due to missing data from that winter. Absurd!

Just to show I'm not cherrypicking... here is Zanesville, Ohio. 20th driest stretch on record [of 130 years]. However, 6 of the years above it are missing more than two weeks of data. Excluding those years as highly suspect, it's 14th of 124 years with sufficient data. Note a bunch of other years with more rainfall are also missing data, but we know those years had more rainfall even despite the missing data. How can this justify a 4, yes 4, category drought improvement? IMO, the weekly Palmer indices are the better measure.

This is all you need to know about how reliable NOAA is. The forecast called for heavy "La Nina" rains in the upper Ohio Valley. That didn't actually happen, but there was a miraculous 3 category drought improvement even though it the period from October 29 to the present has been much drier than normal. In fact, it was the driest on record [among years with complete data] at Wheeling, West Virginia. How does a drought improve by 3 categories during the driest stretch on record? I'm having trouble understanding how this is possible? October 29, 2024 March 18, 2025

Tornado confirmed yesterday at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.

I previously looked into this. It has a small warm bias which peaks from May to July. Maybe on the order of about 0.4F or 0.5F warmer than the average of maximum and minimum, but reaching as much as 1F during the long day period (i.e., May & June). Keep in mind, this period predates even standardized time zones let alone daylight saving time. Time was measured in local solar time (LST), where noon equaled the time where the sun was at its peak in the sky directly overhead. For practicality, official time would be kept at one site for a city or region - perhaps a courthouse. Detroit, owing to its location in the western part of the eastern time zone, is offset about 40 minutes from solar noon under standard time, and 1 hour, 40 minutes under DST. So the morning observation would have been taken around 8:40 EDT, so it doesn’t do a good job capturing the morning low. The inclusion of a 9 pm observation (which would actually be as late as 10:40 EDT) helps to mitigate this somewhat but does not completely eliminate the warm bias. In the wintertime, the 7 am observation (~7:40 am EST at Detroit) is pretty close to sunrise and less biased. This is the main reason for the strong seasonal effect of the bias. The Smithsonian later changed the formula to double weight the 9 pm observation around 1870. So it became the average of 7, 2, 9, 9, which is much closer to max + min / 2, but still has a small residual warm bias by my reckoning. Note, however, that observations weren’t always made by that standard. Sometimes only two observations were made. Sometimes, the observations were sunrise, 2, and 9 which would do a much better job of capturing the minimum. This formula would probably even have a cool bias relative to max + min / 2. However, it wasn’t as common as the other. Sometimes, the morning observation was taken even later.

Only lasted like 5 minutes, not the hail, the entire rain shower. The hail & wind was only like 30 seconds. Actually clearing up now.

Small hail and gusty winds with the showers right now.

This setup looks promising. Still favoring somewhat wetter than normal conditions along the east coast, but plenty of above normal conditions from coast to coast, and an expansive area of below normal precipitation favored across much of the country.

Maybe a little early to talk about, but summer looking solid. Looking high and dry for many on today's update.