Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[TheClimateChanger]

11 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

Mmmk. Live by the sword, die by the sword. If you want to count on AGW driving monthly anomalies, you also have to account for when a Feb 2021 happens.

FWIW, I think a top 5 warmest January in the U.S. is highly unlikely. Just looking at the blocking in AK.

I didn't predict that it would be either. I was just pointing out that, with the current anomaly, the second half could be completely normal and it would still be close. With that said, it's pretty much guaranteed to finish in the Top 20, with Top 10 quite likely. As the colder end, in the means, shouldn't be nearly as extreme as the current positive anomaly. 

[FPizz]

On 1/9/2026 at 10:29 AM, tacoman25 said:

That makes things easier, huh? But was he wrong?

Like he doesnt lol

China has more coal capacity under construction than the entire existing US coal fleet (~230 GW vs ~175 GW). But yeah, let be like them! Dolts

[chubbs]

9 hours ago, FPizz said:

Like he doesnt lol

China has more coal capacity under construction than the entire existing US coal fleet (~230 GW vs ~175 GW). But yeah, let be like them! Dolts

You aren't looking at the whole energy picture. China's use of existing coal plants is dropping. The next few years will tell the tale. Which will slow first in China, new coal or renewable construction?  In any case China's energy strategy is much more realistic than ours.  They have less fossil fuel and renewable resources than we do, yet their energy is abundant and cheap. We are in energy denial, betting on a horse that is falling further and further behind every day. 

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/

[WolfStock1]

3 hours ago, chubbs said:

You aren't looking at the whole energy picture. China's use of existing coal plants is dropping. The next few years will tell the tale. Which will slow first in China, new coal or renewable construction?  In any case China's energy strategy is much more realistic than ours.  They have less fossil fuel and renewable resources than we do, yet their energy is abundant and cheap. We are in energy denial, betting on a horse that is falling further and further behind every day. 

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/

 

In general China is doubling-up their energy production - new fossil plants *and* new renewable (and nuclear) - because they can afford to.  They can afford to because they pay their workers roughly 1/3 what US workers are paid, and because they generally don't worry about NIMBY or environmental impact like we do here in the US; e.g. their Medog Hydro project in Tibet.   The US hasn't built a significant new dam in 50 years, let alone one close to the size of Medog or Three Gorges.   (by comparison our largest - Grand Coulee - is about 1/8 the size of Medog and 1/3 the size of Three Gorges).

It's not some kind of anti-renewable / pro=fossil policy that's holding back the US - it's a combination of higher regulation and environmental protection, NIMBYism, the fact that China is less prosperous than the US, and also simple geography.

[TheClimateChanger]

Surprised nobody shared the 2025 global numbers. Most temperature datasets say 3rd warmest, slightly behind 2023, although NASA's GISTEMP narrowly edged out 2023 for 2nd warmest. 2024 is the unanimous #1 in all major datasets.

 

[chubbs]

NOAA ocean heat content surged last year. Agrees with other ocean heat datasets for 2025 posted above. Another sign of accelerating warming since the hiatus ended.

 

 

[chubbs]

21 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

In general China is doubling-up their energy production - new fossil plants *and* new renewable (and nuclear) - because they can afford to.  They can afford to because they pay their workers roughly 1/3 what US workers are paid, and because they generally don't worry about NIMBY or environmental impact like we do here in the US; e.g. their Medog Hydro project in Tibet.   The US hasn't built a significant new dam in 50 years, let alone one close to the size of Medog or Three Gorges.   (by comparison our largest - Grand Coulee - is about 1/8 the size of Medog and 1/3 the size of Three Gorges).

It's not some kind of anti-renewable / pro=fossil policy that's holding back the US - it's a combination of higher regulation and environmental protection, NIMBYism, the fact that China is less prosperous than the US, and also simple geography.

We aren't helping ourselves by adopting anti-renewable/EV policies. These technologies are still coming to the US, but at a slower pace than they would have.

[WolfStock1]

2 hours ago, chubbs said:

We aren't helping ourselves by adopting anti-renewable/EV policies. These technologies are still coming to the US, but at a slower pace than they would have.

 

In general the policy shift hasn't been "anti-renewable" though - it's been towards weaning renewables off the government tit to self-sustaining mode.    The cancellations have been when people and companies find that many of these projects are not actually financially viable.

However that said - of note is that this started happening in late 2023 - long before the current administration came in and started implementing its policy shift.    As such much of the failures of these projects had nothing to with policy - but rather a slow popping of the post-covid renewable energy bubble.

 

[ChescoWx]

[ChescoWx]

On 1/9/2026 at 3:50 PM, TheClimateChanger said:

 

So my climate pair....one of these things is not warming like the other....wonder why?

[TheClimateChanger]

36 minutes ago, ChescoWx said:

So my climate pair....one of these things is not warming like the other....wonder why?

Thank you for the comment. The official values for Chester County show more warming over that period. It looks like your numbers start near the NOAA values and then drift lower over time. Not sure how you are correcting for changing station basket or is this only comparing one or two sites.

[ChescoWx]

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Thank you for the comment. The official values for Chester County show more warming over that period. It looks like your numbers start near the NOAA values and then drift lower over time. Not sure how you are correcting for changing station basket or is this only comparing one or two sites.

It looks like those are the adjusted altered figures....slope is wrong on the above

[Cobalt]

3 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Thank you for the comment. The official values for Chester County show more warming over that period. It looks like your numbers start near the NOAA values and then drift lower over time. Not sure how you are correcting for changing station basket or is this only comparing one or two sites.

Wow, 6F per century if this trend line continues.

[ChescoWx]

Uh global warming uh climate change rearing it's ugly head again!

[Cobalt]

1 minute ago, ChescoWx said:

Uh global warming uh climate change rearing it's ugly head again!

Where's your mention of all of the cities in the Western US that have had record warm starts to the winter?

[chubbs]

8 hours ago, ChescoWx said:

So my climate pair....one of these things is not warming like the other....wonder why?

Why are the cooling rates in your chart different? Your own faulty analysis. Comparing the raw data at individual Chester County sites to the Philadelphia Airport shows very good agreement in warming rates; i.e, the Philadelphia airport is warming at the same rate as Chester County.   Well known that averaging over a changing network skews the data. If the station network cools with time then a simple average of the changing network will underestimate warming.  That's exactly what is happening in your charts.

 

[ChescoWx]

2 hours ago, chubbs said:

Why are the cooling rates in your chart different? Your own faulty analysis. Comparing the raw data at individual Chester County sites to the Philadelphia Airport shows very good agreement in warming rates; i.e, the Philadelphia airport is warming at the same rate as Chester County.   Well known that averaging over a changing network skews the data. If the station network cools with time then a simple average of the changing network will underestimate warming.  That's exactly what is happening in your charts.

 

Because as the chart clearly shows they are of course not warming at the same rate....PHL is exceeding as you would expect the warming at what we would expect at a non-UHI site.

[ChescoWx]

3 hours ago, Cobalt said:

Where's your mention of all of the cities in the Western US that have had record warm starts to the winter?

Simply cyclical climate swings again nothing to see here....

[chubbs]

10 hours ago, ChescoWx said:

Because as the chart clearly shows they are of course not warming at the same rate....PHL is exceeding as you would expect the warming at what we would expect at a non-UHI site.

You are either ignoring the evidence I posted or don't understand it. Lets make it simple. Here is the Avondale USCRN station, carefully chosen with 3 identical thermometers.  Since its start-up in 2007, Avondale has warmed at .125F per year or 1.25F per decade. Over the same period,  PHL has warmed by .113F per year or 1.13 per decade. The same numbers are in the table I posted. The table shows similar results for the 12 DEOS stations, KMQS, Phoenixville, etc. All warming at a similar rate as PHL. Clear and overwhelming evidence that Chester county is warming at the same rate as the Philadelphia Airport.  The raw data doesn't support the point you are making.

[rcostell]

You are either ignoring the evidence I posted or don't understand it. Lets make it simple. Here is the Avondale USCRN station, carefully chosen with 3 identical thermometers.  Since its start-up in 2007, Avondale has warmed at .125F per year or 1.25F per decade. Over the same period,  PHL has warmed by .113F per year or 1.13 per decade. The same numbers are in the table I posted. The table shows similar results for the 12 DEOS stations, KMQS, Phoenixville, etc. All warming at a similar rate as PHL. Clear and overwhelming evidence that Chester county is warming at the same rate as the Philadelphia Airport.  The raw data doesn't support the point you are making.

Please take to the “Chester County bickering “ thread. Again. Please.


.

[ChescoWx]

[WolfStock1]

1 hour ago, ChescoWx said:

 

Seems about right, and is consistent with a slow shift upwards in temperatures.   In a no-change scenario one would expect both the number of record highs and the number of record lows to be decreasing over time.   In a shifting-upwards scenario one would expect the number of record highs to be remaining about constant while the number of record lows decrease over time; those are apparent in those charts.

 

 

[TheClimateChanger]

UAH satellite temperature record confirms incredible lower tropospheric US warmth in December 2025.

(1) CONUS average a whopping +2.10°C above the 1991-2020 mean, which was the SECOND warmest of any month on record (since December 1978). Only March 2012's +2.24°C was warmer. That month is sometimes referred to as "Morch" of 2012, as a portmanteau of March and torch.

(2) CONUS + Alaska average checked in at an incredible +1.77°C. This was also the second highest value of record, being narrowly edged by the incredible torch of February 2017 ("Torchuary") which came in at +1.80°C. This one is even more incredible given the noteworthy cold in parts of Alaska.

Source: nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.1/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.1.txt

[TheClimateChanger]

Most anomalously warm months for the CONUS, per UAH lower tropospheric data [expressed as deviation from 1991-2020 mean]

(1) March 2012: 2.24°C

(2) December 2025: 2.10°C

(3) February 2017: 2.06°C

(4) April 1981: 1.97°C

(5) October 2024: 1.89°C

(6) November 1999: 1.87°C

(7) November 2016: 1.84°C

(8) December 2021: 1.81°C

(9) May 2018: 1.75°C

(10) March 2007: 1.57°C

 

[TheClimateChanger]

7 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

Seems about right, and is consistent with a slow shift upwards in temperatures.   In a no-change scenario one would expect both the number of record highs and the number of record lows to be decreasing over time.   In a shifting-upwards scenario one would expect the number of record highs to be remaining about constant while the number of record lows decrease over time; those are apparent in those charts.

 

 

I don't agree with you all that often, but this is very true. Ratio moving rapidly in the direction one would expect.

Although I must note that the chart itself is also "rigged" in a few ways to produce an incomplete picture. I'm assuming, of course, it's accurate. Who knows about station selection, have to assume all stations meeting the criteria were selected.

(1) Martz only posts the first time a record was set and ignores later ties. This, of course, produces a bias for both record highs and lows towards the early years - which we can plainly see. The dropoff in highs (and, to an extent, lows) would not be as dramatic otherwise.

(2) The data is unadjusted. Most of the GHCN stations switched from afternoon/evening observation times (5/6 pm) to morning observation times (~7 am), which is the time in which the instruments would have been manually reset. While maybe not a huge factor, this favors occasional "double" counting of record highs up through the mid 20th century and occasional "double" counting of record lows thereafter.

(3) Unclear what direction this bias goes. But it should be noted that a more complete picture would be rendered by indicating the percentage of total data available for each year. The criteria was for stations that reported at least 85% data for 100 years - but where is the missing data. If there is station dropoff towards the end, then that also contributes to the general "softening" of the records. Like I said, this information wasn't presented so I can't so for sure what effect, if any, this has. But I can say for certain that presenting that data would be helpful for presentation.

Regardless of the rigging, the data is fully consistent with a warming climate - record highs are clearly outpacing record lows. The apparent loss of extremes in both directions from the earlier decades is largely (maybe not entirely, but significantly) affected by the convention to list only the first occurrence of a record high or low. That choice necessarily will produce a dynamic where earlier decades show more record-breaking temperatures than later decades.

[WolfStock1]

12 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

.... convention to list only the first occurrence of a record high or low. ...

 

Well - that's kind of the definition of "record" is not?   The 2nd through Nth time you see a given temperature, it's no longer a record. 

(Presumably the left end of the data is truncated; e.g. any given station would have 365 record highs and 365 record lows in its first year; assuming non-leap-year)

[TheClimateChanger]

4 minutes ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

Well - that's kind of the definition of "record" is not?   The 2nd through Nth time you see a given temperature, it's no longer a record. 

(Presumably the left end of the data is truncated; e.g. any given station would have 365 record highs and 365 record lows in its first year; assuming non-leap-year)

Data not truncated, it's from the perspective of today (i.e., records still in existence). A tied record value is still a record value. Regardless, what I said is true, showing only the first occurrence necessarily favors more records in the earlier years. That is not always the convention... NOAA lists all years with a record high in its climate data, typically emphasizing the most recent occurrence where multiple ties have occurred.

[TheClimateChanger]

I just knew someone would call me out for simply stated an incontrovertible fact. Run a random number generator with a certain degree of random variability around a, more or less, constant mean. If you credit the record (i.e., highest and lowest value) only to the first occurrence, more "records" will occur early in the dataset. This is simple mathematics/statistics - no tricks.

[TheClimateChanger]

6 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I just knew someone would call me out for simply stated an incontrovertible fact. Run a random number generator with a certain degree of random variability around a, more or less, constant mean. If you credit the record (i.e., highest and lowest value) only to the first occurrence, more "records" will occur early in the dataset. This is simple mathematics/statistics - no tricks.

Maybe I'm wrong to call it "rigged" but it just so happens that this incontrovertible fact favors the spin that the original poster wanted. And Grok even cited climate as an example, I didn't even bring it up in my query. All I'm saying is that explains a significant portion of why records - both highs and lows - tail off later in the dataset. Of course, lows are dropping more rapidly than highs because the mean is not constant, but rather is slowly rising.

As the famous saying goes - often attributed either to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain - "there are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics."

[donsutherland1]

29 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Maybe I'm wrong to call it "rigged" but it just so happens that this incontrovertible fact favors the spin that the original poster wanted. And Grok even cited climate as an example, I didn't even bring it up in my query. All I'm saying is that explains a significant portion of why records - both highs and lows - tail off later in the dataset. Of course, lows are dropping more rapidly than highs because the mean is not constant, but rather is slowly rising.

As the famous saying goes - often attributed either to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain - "there are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics."

Record high (minimum and maximum temperatures) are being tied or broken more frequently than record low (minimum and maximum) temperatures. In rapidly warming places, the outcomes are especially skewed. UHI + climate change are driving the outcome in the cities. Here's Phoenix.

Yellow denotes 2000-2019; Orange denotes 2000-2026.