Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

O....K....

Sorry, but lots of really wacked out stuff here. 

I'll happily buy land near sea level from anyone who happens to own it and shares your viewpoint.   I kinda like the beach - good sunsets and waves and all that (to answer your "why" point).

I won't, however, be investing in any boreal farmland futures.

Well if you dont know science you'd consider it whacked out. 

Putin has openly stated he's preparing for Siberia to become the world's new bread basket and he's quite excited about it and if you'd look at a map of what parts of the world are warming the fastest you'd definitely agree. And you don't think Trump wants Greenland only for military reasons do you?

As far as sunsets are concerned I've lived in many parts of the world and there is nothing like the colors you see in a desert sunset bar none. As far as locations one might want to live are concerned my main interest is astronomy and for that you want to get away from the ocean, water vapor is nothing more than an air pollutant that traps other air pollutants close to the ground and creates annoying and unhealthy haze. I spent decades living by the ocean so I know. The best place to live for low air pollution and the clearest skies is up in the mountains why do you think that's where the world's greatest and largest observatories are located and where the lowest asthma rates are?

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

It's always hard to break record, but Summer 2027 has the potential to be warm, being post-El Nino (one that will break the post-1948 record by 15-20%). This has nothing do with global warming:

 

I've been saying this for a long time I'm quite excited for the next two summers, my analogs are 1966, 1983, 1999 and 2010 for quite obvious reasons.  If the el nino is as strong as the one in 1998 it may actually take two years for all that extra heat to be released so our extra hot summers goals might not be fully realized until 2028.

On top of this we are also cycling back to a drier climate like we had in the 1980s and 1990s, when we had some of our most extreme summers and longest heatwaves, something I saw coming from a few years ago. The El Nino will only be a minor speed bump in that trend no matter how historic it is.

[LibertyBell]

5 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

In the early release of data, July 2026 has dethroned July 1936 as the hottest month on record for the United States.

With July warming about 0.51° per decade since 1980, the longstanding Dust Bowl era record was bound to fall. July 2012 narrowly fell short of the mark. July 2026 surpassed it by more than 0.10°.

I really dont rank summers by average temperatures, summers should be ranked by extreme temperatures, length of heat waves and number of heat related deaths.

With that said I offer up my own list and 1936 is definitely near the top but there are several other extreme summers right up there with it. I'll do mine in chronological order.

1896

1911

1914

1936

1944

1948

1953

1955

1966

1977

1980

1983

1988

1991

1993

1995

1999

2002

2010

2011

 

Special mention needs to be given to the 11 year cycle which often include the hottest summers of their decade (1911, 1944, 1955, 1966, 1977, 1988, 1999, 2010).

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

I've been saying this for a long time I'm quite excited for the next two summers, my analogs are 1966, 1983, 1999 and 2010 for quite obvious reasons.  If the el nino is as strong as the one in 1998 it may actually take two years for all that extra heat to be released so our extra hot summers goals might not be fully realized until 2028.

On top of this we are also cycling back to a drier climate like we had in the 1980s and 1990s, when we had some of our most extreme summers and longest heatwaves, something I saw coming from a few years ago. The El Nino will only be a minor speed bump in that trend no matter how historic it is.

Year 2 has lower correlation numbers, but is still generally mild

[GaWx]

Week 31 of worldwide YTD cumulative burnt area by wildfires: 2026 is still by a good margin lowest of comparable weeks of 2012-26:


 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-area-burnt-by-wildfires-by-week?time=1..52&tab=line

[donsutherland1]

The Dust Bowl occupies an almost sacred place in the mythology of American climate-change denial.

For decades, July 1936 was treated as something more than an old weather record. It was a relic. It was a supposedly untouchable reminder that extreme heat had happened long before modern greenhouse-gas concentrations reached today’s levels. Whenever evidence of warming accumulated, the response could be summoned: What about 1936? If the climate is warming, why hasn’t that record been broken?

For ninety years, it wasn’t. Even July 2012 fell short. Then came July 2026.

NOAA reported that July 2026 averaged 76.89°F across the contiguous United States, surpassing July 1936 and becoming the hottest month in the nation’s instrumental record. The seemingly unbreakable record had fallen.

One monthly record does not prove climate change. Science does not rest on a single heat wave, drought, hurricane, or thermometer. The case for human-caused warming rests on something far larger: rising global temperatures, increasing ocean heat, retreating ice, rising seas, changing extremes, and the well-established physics of greenhouse gases.

But the fall of July 1936 matters enormously as a symbol. For years, climate-change deniers used the endurance of that record as evidence that modern warming was exaggerated or nonexistent. Now the record they had elevated into an argument no longer supports them.

And that creates a problem. If 1936 mattered when it stood unbeaten, it cannot suddenly become meaningless the moment it falls.

The initial response from parts of the denial movement has been predictable. Denial, excuses, and insinuations that NOAA’s measurements somehow are not the “real” measurements. A CFACT policy analyst, for example, appealed to supposedly superior “real measured thermometer data.”

But where is the analysis? Where is the methodology? Where is the reproducible evidence demonstrating that NOAA is wrong? Where is the paper with all that information? There is nothing. Just a hollow claim on social media. 

Without those things, “I have the real data” is not a scientific argument. It is an appeal to belief. It is a hallucination of an alternate reality that is as irrelevant to science as it is unreal.

Science works differently. Produce the data. Explain the method. Show the calculations. Allow others to test them. If the evidence survives scrutiny, scientific understanding changes. Those rules may not hold in the policy world where ideology holds enormous power and interests influence thinking. But the scientific world is a whole different place. Pursuit of truth, even if that pursuit requires discarding earlier understanding, is of paramount importance.

Ideological denial works in reverse of science. When evidence threatens the conclusion, the evidence itself becomes suspect. Beliefs, ideology, and interests must be defended, even at the cost of truth.

The above rejection of the reality that July 2026 was hotter than July 1936 recalls opponents of Galileo who resisted observations that threatened the universe they already believed in. Rather than see for themselves through Galileo's telescope, they turned down his invitation. Sometimes it is easier to distrust the telescope than to rebuild one's understanding of the cosmos. To those timid souls, maintaining error is far more comforting than accepting that one's belief was wrong. Genuine courage gives one the strength to revise one's thinking when the evidence suggests such change is needed. 

The NOAA has confirmed that July 2026 is now the hottest month on record in the United States. A longstanding record has not merely been surpassed. One of the denial movement’s most durable rhetorical monuments has been toppled.

Climate change denial will not disappear because of a single record. New excuses will arise. Goalposts will be moved. But something important has changed.

For ninety years, July 1936 stood as the great American heat record. It survived generation after generation. It survived 2012. It survived decades of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Then, in July 2026, it fell.

Science has no sacred records. It has evidence. 1936 was evidence. 2026 is evidence.

The thermometer has now rendered its verdict. Pretense that it has not, cannot affect reality.  Pretense can only undermine the credibility of those who choose not to accept reality.

[WolfStock1]

19 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

Well if you dont know science you'd consider it whacked out. 

Putin has openly stated he's preparing for Siberia to become the world's new bread basket and he's quite excited about it and if you'd look at a map of what parts of the world are warming the fastest you'd definitely agree. And you don't think Trump wants Greenland only for military reasons do you?

As far as sunsets are concerned I've lived in many parts of the world and there is nothing like the colors you see in a desert sunset bar none. As far as locations one might want to live are concerned my main interest is astronomy and for that you want to get away from the ocean, water vapor is nothing more than an air pollutant that traps other air pollutants close to the ground and creates annoying and unhealthy haze. I spent decades living by the ocean so I know. The best place to live for low air pollution and the clearest skies is up in the mountains why do you think that's where the world's greatest and largest observatories are located and where the lowest asthma rates are?

Re: Putin and Trump - that's politics, not science.

Re: Observatories - these have *always* been in place high in the mountains, since long before CC became a thing.   E.g. Mauna Kea in 1901, Kitt Peak in 1960, etc.   Mountain air has *always* been known to be cleaner/clearer than seaside air since the beginning of time, and that has nothing to with CC.   It's basic physics / meteorology, as well as where people live.   It's actually the opposite of of what you claim - part of the reason why mountain air is so clear is ironically *because* for most people it's more desirable to live on the coast.

So - perhaps try again with your reasoning.

 

[rclab]

8 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Dust Bowl occupies an almost sacred place in the mythology of American climate-change denial.

For decades, July 1936 was treated as something more than an old weather record. It was a relic. It was a supposedly untouchable reminder that extreme heat had happened long before modern greenhouse-gas concentrations reached today’s levels. Whenever evidence of warming accumulated, the response could be summoned: What about 1936? If the climate is warming, why hasn’t that record been broken?

For ninety years, it wasn’t. Even July 2012 fell short. Then came July 2026.

NOAA reported that July 2026 averaged 76.89°F across the contiguous United States, surpassing July 1936 and becoming the hottest month in the nation’s instrumental record. The seemingly unbreakable record had fallen.

One monthly record does not prove climate change. Science does not rest on a single heat wave, drought, hurricane, or thermometer. The case for human-caused warming rests on something far larger: rising global temperatures, increasing ocean heat, retreating ice, rising seas, changing extremes, and the well-established physics of greenhouse gases.

But the fall of July 1936 matters enormously as a symbol. For years, climate-change deniers used the endurance of that record as evidence that modern warming was exaggerated or nonexistent. Now the record they had elevated into an argument no longer supports them.

And that creates a problem. If 1936 mattered when it stood unbeaten, it cannot suddenly become meaningless the moment it falls.

The initial response from parts of the denial movement has been predictable. Denial, excuses, and insinuations that NOAA’s measurements somehow are not the “real” measurements. A CFACT policy analyst, for example, appealed to supposedly superior “real measured thermometer data.”

But where is the analysis? Where is the methodology? Where is the reproducible evidence demonstrating that NOAA is wrong? Where is the paper with all that information? There is nothing. Just a hollow claim on social media. 

Without those things, “I have the real data” is not a scientific argument. It is an appeal to belief. It is a hallucination of an alternate reality that is as irrelevant to science as it is unreal.

Science works differently. Produce the data. Explain the method. Show the calculations. Allow others to test them. If the evidence survives scrutiny, scientific understanding changes. Those rules may not hold in the policy world where ideology holds enormous power and interests influence thinking. But the scientific world is a whole different place. Pursuit of truth, even if that pursuit requires discarding earlier understanding, is of paramount importance.

Ideological denial works in reverse of science. When evidence threatens the conclusion, the evidence itself becomes suspect. Beliefs, ideology, and interests must be defended, even at the cost of truth.

The above rejection of the reality that July 2026 was hotter than July 1936 recalls opponents of Galileo who resisted observations that threatened the universe they already believed in. Rather than see for themselves through Galileo's telescope, they turned down his invitation. Sometimes it is easier to distrust the telescope than to rebuild one's understanding of the cosmos. To those timid souls, maintaining error is far more comforting than accepting that one's belief was wrong. Genuine courage gives one the strength to revise one's thinking when the evidence suggests such change is needed. 

The NOAA has confirmed that July 2026 is now the hottest month on record in the United States. A longstanding record has not merely been surpassed. One of the denial movement’s most durable rhetorical monuments has been toppled.

Climate change denial will not disappear because of a single record. New excuses will arise. Goalposts will be moved. But something important has changed.

For ninety years, July 1936 stood as the great American heat record. It survived generation after generation. It survived 2012. It survived decades of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Then, in July 2026, it fell.

Science has no sacred records. It has evidence. 1936 was evidence. 2026 is evidence.

The thermometer has now rendered its verdict. Pretense that it has not, cannot affect reality.  Pretense can only undermine the credibility of those who choose not to accept reality.

Ironically a multi year drought whose effects were enhanced by poor land management …. also remains, ‘Responsibility Ours’. As always …..

[Typhoon Tip]

On 8/10/2026 at 5:04 PM, donsutherland1 said:

In the early release of data, July 2026 has dethroned July 1936 as the hottest month on record for the United States.

With July warming about 0.51° per decade since 1980, the longstanding Dust Bowl era record was bound to fall. July 2012 narrowly fell short of the mark. July 2026 surpassed it by more than 0.10°.

Not directed at you, Don ...

so be careful with that trend line.  m is not that sloped going back to 1895.  If one does the d(m) they come to find that the slope is not linear.  It is actually some exponential.  y=x raised to some power probably less than 2 granted, but the expose' is that it is "accelerating" ... 

That is really a dangerous state of affairs.  Because that rate of acceleration is, in itself, not deterministically constant. All the archeological climate data shows that the rate of green house fixing attributed to anthropomorphic activity has exceeded the rate of any non-human attributed fixing events, by 100x, since the last ice age - a mere second on the geological clock.  That amount of change in that amount of time is unprecedented on any timescales extending back through ancient climates via paleoclimatology.

Earth is behind, is what that ominously implicates. The 2023 wholesale planetary surge by nearly a half a deg C seems to evince more of a restoring, supported by observation that post the occurrence, we have yet to observe any correction back to the initial state. That strongly suggest 2023 spring was the correction! 

As supposition, the trend itself has been accelerating all along; that superlinearity strongly argues effecting a synergistic 'bounce'.  And there is no reason to presume the 2023 correction was complete.

Math's track record in forecasting how nonlinear feedbacks compound (cloud response, aerosol unmasking rate, ice-albedo timing ... non-Markovian effects on systemic return rates... etc..etc) is worse than its track record on the linear CO2-forcing terms.  There are more bounces probably coming ladies and gents.  

[LibertyBell]

14 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

Re: Putin and Trump - that's politics, not science.

Re: Observatories - these have *always* been in place high in the mountains, since long before CC became a thing.   E.g. Mauna Kea in 1901, Kitt Peak in 1960, etc.   Mountain air has *always* been known to be cleaner/clearer than seaside air since the beginning of time, and that has nothing to with CC.   It's basic physics / meteorology, as well as where people live.   It's actually the opposite of of what you claim - part of the reason why mountain air is so clear is ironically *because* for most people it's more desirable to live on the coast.

So - perhaps try again with your reasoning.

 

The human overpopulation problem is the main causative factor in climate change and pollution and everything else being discussed. Following the herd doesn't lead to a good outcome. It's why the planet was so much cleaner during the pandemic. And yes dirttiness predates ACC but ACC itself is the result of pollution that humanity has been known for since the industrial age began. You seem a bit too defensive to be objective about the self destructive nature of humanity. 

[LibertyBell]

20 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Dust Bowl occupies an almost sacred place in the mythology of American climate-change denial.

For decades, July 1936 was treated as something more than an old weather record. It was a relic. It was a supposedly untouchable reminder that extreme heat had happened long before modern greenhouse-gas concentrations reached today’s levels. Whenever evidence of warming accumulated, the response could be summoned: What about 1936? If the climate is warming, why hasn’t that record been broken?

For ninety years, it wasn’t. Even July 2012 fell short. Then came July 2026.

NOAA reported that July 2026 averaged 76.89°F across the contiguous United States, surpassing July 1936 and becoming the hottest month in the nation’s instrumental record. The seemingly unbreakable record had fallen.

One monthly record does not prove climate change. Science does not rest on a single heat wave, drought, hurricane, or thermometer. The case for human-caused warming rests on something far larger: rising global temperatures, increasing ocean heat, retreating ice, rising seas, changing extremes, and the well-established physics of greenhouse gases.

But the fall of July 1936 matters enormously as a symbol. For years, climate-change deniers used the endurance of that record as evidence that modern warming was exaggerated or nonexistent. Now the record they had elevated into an argument no longer supports them.

And that creates a problem. If 1936 mattered when it stood unbeaten, it cannot suddenly become meaningless the moment it falls.

The initial response from parts of the denial movement has been predictable. Denial, excuses, and insinuations that NOAA’s measurements somehow are not the “real” measurements. A CFACT policy analyst, for example, appealed to supposedly superior “real measured thermometer data.”

But where is the analysis? Where is the methodology? Where is the reproducible evidence demonstrating that NOAA is wrong? Where is the paper with all that information? There is nothing. Just a hollow claim on social media. 

Without those things, “I have the real data” is not a scientific argument. It is an appeal to belief. It is a hallucination of an alternate reality that is as irrelevant to science as it is unreal.

Science works differently. Produce the data. Explain the method. Show the calculations. Allow others to test them. If the evidence survives scrutiny, scientific understanding changes. Those rules may not hold in the policy world where ideology holds enormous power and interests influence thinking. But the scientific world is a whole different place. Pursuit of truth, even if that pursuit requires discarding earlier understanding, is of paramount importance.

Ideological denial works in reverse of science. When evidence threatens the conclusion, the evidence itself becomes suspect. Beliefs, ideology, and interests must be defended, even at the cost of truth.

The above rejection of the reality that July 2026 was hotter than July 1936 recalls opponents of Galileo who resisted observations that threatened the universe they already believed in. Rather than see for themselves through Galileo's telescope, they turned down his invitation. Sometimes it is easier to distrust the telescope than to rebuild one's understanding of the cosmos. To those timid souls, maintaining error is far more comforting than accepting that one's belief was wrong. Genuine courage gives one the strength to revise one's thinking when the evidence suggests such change is needed. 

The NOAA has confirmed that July 2026 is now the hottest month on record in the United States. A longstanding record has not merely been surpassed. One of the denial movement’s most durable rhetorical monuments has been toppled.

Climate change denial will not disappear because of a single record. New excuses will arise. Goalposts will be moved. But something important has changed.

For ninety years, July 1936 stood as the great American heat record. It survived generation after generation. It survived 2012. It survived decades of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Then, in July 2026, it fell.

Science has no sacred records. It has evidence. 1936 was evidence. 2026 is evidence.

The thermometer has now rendered its verdict. Pretense that it has not, cannot affect reality.  Pretense can only undermine the credibility of those who choose not to accept reality.

I never considered July 1936 to be such a hot outlier. For the middle of the country maybe but not really outside of the farming belt. 1936 was a one heatwave wonder for those of us on the East Coast and represents the folly of ranking summer months by average temperatures. From that sane period 1944 was a much hotter summer. Just take a look at how many 100 degree days there were and how far north they got.  Burlington VT set their all time high of 101 that summer. If you connect together all the 11 year cycle summers beginning with 1911 you see that they stand out for exceptional extreme heat.

[donsutherland1]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

I never considered July 1936 to be such a hot outlier. For the middle of the country maybe but not really outside of the farming belt. 1936 was a one heatwave wonder for those of us on the East Coast and represents the folly of ranking summer months by average temperatures. From that sane period 1944 was a much hotter summer. Just take a look at how many 100 degree days there were and how far north they got.  Burlington VT set their all time high of 101 that summer. If you connect together all the 11 year cycle summers beginning with 1911 you see that they stand out for exceptional extreme heat.

The Dust Bowl was a regional phenomenon focused largely on the Plains and Midwest (location of the extreme drought amplified by poor land use/farming practices). Heat occasionally spread outside that region. New York City's 106° record is one example. The heat was so intense that the contiguous United States recorded its hottest month on record in July 1936. 

That record has fallen now. Slowly but inexorably, as temperatures continue to rise, some of the site records from 1936 in the Plains and Midwest are also being erased. Over the next few decades, many more of those records will likely be eclipsed. It's plausible that the July 2026 mark will be surpassed one or more times in the next 10-20 years.

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Dust Bowl was a regional phenomenon focused largely on the Plains and Midwest (location of the extreme drought amplified by poor land use/farming practices). Heat occasionally spread outside that region. New York City's 106° record is one example. The heat was so intense that the contiguous United States recorded its hottest month on record in July 1936. 

That record has fallen now. Slowly but inexorably, as temperatures continue to rise, some of the site records from 1936 in the Plains and Midwest are also being erased. Over the next few decades, many more of those records will likely be eclipsed. It's plausible that the July 2026 mark will be surpassed one or more times in the next 10-20 years.

Btw, Europe is quickly closing on a JJA warmest ever for a second consecutive year.  

I'm not sure if that's on whole, or in lesser quadratures but just a-priori on the story-line to date proooobably implicates everywhere?  I dunno on that per se.  interesting tho

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Dust Bowl was a regional phenomenon focused largely on the Plains and Midwest (location of the extreme drought amplified by poor land use/farming practices). Heat occasionally spread outside that region. New York City's 106° record is one example. The heat was so intense that the contiguous United States recorded its hottest month on record in July 1936. 

That record has fallen now. Slowly but inexorably, as temperatures continue to rise, some of the site records from 1936 in the Plains and Midwest are also being erased. Over the next few decades, many more of those records will likely be eclipsed. It's plausible that the July 2026 mark will be surpassed one or more times in the next 10-20 years.

One thing I wanna do when I have the free time - which I never do - is find the actual geophysically applied science to/and resulting publication(s) regarding the supposed feedbacks between the earth surface and air during the Dust Bowl era.

In blunt, simple terms, I always thought that was dubious - but sort of covet that opinion more so until I see how exactly those that claim farming practices/methodology of land management can couple en masse to the extent that it causes an entire continental -scaled consequence.   mmm okay. I can understand feedbacks, but that would be in part.  I am suspicious of the idea that land management was the primary driver of haboob phenomenon. 

There are also two distinct aspects that I think folks also conflate - at least in the general discussion that seems to be suggested to me.  Dust storms and heat can by mutually exclusively originating.  Yes, heat aids in evaporation... so a relationship is quite obviously there.  But it is also not required.  Example, Gobi desert spring dust storm climo; these events are triggered by the "Mongolian Cyclone" sending strong cold winds. These events are just as bad... significantly impacting air quality and visibility in just the same exact way.  I'm preeeetty sure there is no farming practices in the Gobi desert lending to creating a vast heat dome in the late winter and springtime there.  Ya think

If all that skepticism (and sarcasm!) is true, then that logically urges that whatever pattern synergistically aroused big heat response in 1936 was actually not holistically caused by land-air feedback as a primary mechanism. There likely was feedback modulation going on... Bad land management certainly contributed to the dust side of the discussion.  But there may have been resonance in the hemisphere lending to a multi-seasonal 'pattern fractal'; a super-synoptic origin forcing a leitmotif that favored heat and drought, then undermined by bad land management.  These decadal fractal in synoptic biases happen throughout history.

I really feel like I need to see the wholesale science on the matter to gain an understanding of how much 'improper land management practices led to the dust storm' vs how much of that may have also just been a dry antecedent decadal signal then exacerbating dusty consequence.  As far as the heat, as a Meteorologist, that starts over eastern Asia with planetary wave transmitting wave orientation across the Pacific, ultimately favoring(not favoring) a long-wave resonance over North America.

All of which is preface to an idea ... that should such a resonance recur during this latter accelerating base-line trend ... I wonder what the extremes would layout like.

[chubbs]

Good quick explainer. 

 

[A-L-E-K]

makes u think^

[TheClimateChanger]

I wanted to take a closer look at the claim that NOAA/NCEI’s July 2026 temperature ranking is largely the product of “tampering” or adjustments to the historical temperature record. Tony Heller has advanced this claim on X/Twitter, and we've seen similar claims made by members here (cough, cough, ChescoWx).

So I downloaded the raw USHCN Tmax and Tmin monthly data directly from NOAA, without applying NOAA’s homogenization adjustments, and tried to see how far one can get using the raw observations alone. The results were pretty illuminating.

The first issue is that simply averaging the absolute temperatures of all available USHCN stations each year is not a very good way to construct a national temperature series.

Although USHCN contains 1,218 designated stations, nowhere near 1,218 stations report in every July. The number of stations with both Tmax and Tmin data increased from only about 528 in 1895 to roughly 1,200 by the 1930s–1960s, then began declining sharply in recent decades:

• 1990: 1,180
• 2000: 1,115
• 2010: 980
• 2020: 779
• 2025: 730
• 2026: 458 so far in the August 12 archive

That creates a compositional problem. If the stations disappearing from the network are climatologically warmer or cooler than those remaining, the simple national average can change even if temperatures at every individual station do not. Note that 2026 data is provisional, as a lot of stations are not yet reported in the dataset file.

Step 1: Calculate station anomalies

To deal with this, I calculated a 1951–1980 July climatology for each individual USHCN station. This was a particularly useful reference period because station coverage was near its peak; 1,217 of the 1,218 stations had sufficient data to calculate a usable climatology.

For every station and every July, I then calculated:

July anomaly = observed July temperature − that station’s own 1951–1980 July mean

This removes most of the changing-station-composition problem, because a hot station disappearing from the network no longer mechanically lowers the national average merely because its absolute climatological temperature was higher.

That made a surprisingly large difference in recent decades.

For July Tmax from 1990–2025:

• simple raw station-average trend: +0.35°F/decade
• station-anomaly trend: +0.55°F/decade
• composition effect: about −0.20°F/decade

From 2000–2025:

• simple raw Tmax trend: only +0.09°F/decade
• station-anomaly trend: +0.34°F/decade
• composition effect: about −0.25°F/decade

Why? Because the climatological July Tmax of the stations actually reporting has declined substantially:

Year	Mean July climatology of reporting Tmax stations
1990	87.39°F
2000	87.43°F
2010	87.31°F
2020	86.96°F
2025	86.88°F

In other words, the modern USHCN reporting network has increasingly become composed of cooler stations. Simply averaging their absolute temperatures therefore introduces an artificial cooling tendency.

The same phenomenon appears in Tmin.

Using an equal-station anomaly calculation, July 2026 came out approximately:

• Tmax: +1.66°F
• Tmin: +3.71°F
• Tavg: +2.68°F

On that basis, 2026 ranked roughly:

• 14th warmest Tmax
• 1st warmest Tmin
• 5th warmest Tavg

But there was still another problem.

Step 2: Geographic weighting

A station in a densely sampled part of Ohio should not carry the same national weight as a station representing a huge area of Nevada, Montana, or Wyoming.

So I took the raw USHCN station anomalies and placed them on a fixed 0.25° CONUS land grid. Each grid cell was assigned the anomaly of its nearest reporting USHCN station, and the resulting cells were area-weighted using the cosine of latitude.

This is essentially a simple Voronoi-style geographic weighting.

Importantly, it does not use NOAA homogenization. It does not alter the raw station observations. It merely prevents regions containing many stations from receiving disproportionately large weight in the national average.

The effect was substantial.

After rebasing our resulting national series to the same 1901–2000 reference used by NCEI, several important Julys looked like this:

Year	Equal-weight raw USHCN	Area-weighted raw USHCN	NCEI
1901	+3.25°F	+2.55°F	+2.60°F
1934	+2.99°F	+2.87°F	+2.72°F
1936	+3.32°F	+3.29°F	+3.14°F
1980	+2.02°F	+2.12°F	+2.09°F
2000	−0.59°F	+0.02°F	+0.22°F
2006	+2.32°F	+2.59°F	+2.76°F
2012	+3.15°F	+2.95°F	+3.10°F
2022	+2.02°F	+2.56°F	+2.76°F
2023	+1.25°F	+1.76°F	+2.02°F
2024	+1.47°F	+1.77°F	+2.07°F
2026	+2.67°F	+3.15°F	+3.26°F

The 1901 result is especially revealing.

Under a naïve equal-station average, 1901 appeared about 0.65°F warmer relative to NCEI. Once the raw observations were geographically weighted, the discrepancy collapsed to about 0.05°F.

The same thing happened at the other end of the record.

Our equal-station calculation put 2026 at only about +2.67°F, compared with NCEI’s +3.26°F. Geographic weighting alone moved the raw-USHCN result to +3.15°F.

No homogenization adjustment was necessary to explain most of that gap.

Final raw-USHCN ranking

Using the geographically weighted raw station anomalies, the leading Julys were:

1. 1936: +3.29°F
2. 2026: +3.15°F
3. 2012: +2.95°F
4. 1934: +2.87°F
5. 2006: +2.59°F
6. 2022: +2.56°F
7. 1901: +2.55°F

NCEI places 2026 slightly ahead of 1936 instead:

• 2026: +3.26°F
• 1936: +3.14°F

So after controlling for station composition and geographic weighting, the difference between our deliberately simple raw-data-only method and NCEI is not some enormous discrepancy.

Our raw calculation has 1936 about 0.15°F warmer than 2026.

NCEI has 2026 about 0.12°F warmer than 1936.

That leaves only about a 0.27°F swing in their relative difference between our raw-data method and the full NCEI analysis.

Now compare the entire records

This was perhaps the most surprising result.

Once the raw USHCN observations are converted to station anomalies and geographically weighted, the resulting curve lies almost directly on top of the official NCEI series.

Across 1895–2026, the mean absolute difference between the two annual July anomaly series is only about 0.11°F.

And remember what went into our series:

• raw USHCN observations
• individual station climatologies
• geographic weighting

That's it.

No NOAA homogenization adjustments were applied.

What does this actually tell us?

This certainly does not demonstrate that every NOAA adjustment is perfect, nor does our simple experiment precisely reproduce NOAA’s methodology. NOAA uses a larger station network, homogenization, and substantially more sophisticated spatial interpolation.

But it does demonstrate something important.

Most of the apparent disagreement between a naïve “raw USHCN” calculation and NOAA/NCEI can be reproduced without changing a single thermometer observation.

Two mundane methodological problems explain an enormous portion of it:

1. Changing station composition
2. Unequal geographic station density

The raw USHCN network has lost hundreds of reporting stations in recent decades, and the stations disappearing have, on average, been climatologically warmer than those remaining. That artificially suppresses recent temperatures if one simply averages absolute station readings.

Meanwhile, equal station weighting gives densely sampled portions of the country far too much influence. Correcting that spatial bias pushes recent hot years upward and, in some cases, early hot years downward.

The transformation of 1901 is particularly instructive:

Naïve raw USHCN: +3.25°F
Geographically weighted raw USHCN: +2.55°F
NCEI: +2.60°F

And for 2026:

Naïve raw USHCN: +2.67°F
Geographically weighted raw USHCN: +3.15°F
NCEI: +3.26°F

So when someone produces a graph of “raw USHCN temperatures” and argues that the difference from NOAA must therefore have been manufactured through data adjustments, there is a very large omitted variable: how the raw data are aggregated in the first place. A simple station-anomaly calculation plus basic geographic weighting — using the unaltered raw observations themselves — gets astonishingly close to the official NCEI record.

[Typhoon Tip]

40 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

I wanted to take a closer look at the claim that NOAA/NCEI’s July 2026 temperature ranking is largely the product of “tampering” or adjustments to the historical temperature record. Tony Heller has advanced this claim on X/Twitter, and we've seen similar claims made by members here (cough, cough, ChescoWx).

So I downloaded the raw USHCN Tmax and Tmin monthly data directly from NOAA, without applying NOAA’s homogenization adjustments, and tried to see how far one can get using the raw observations alone. The results were pretty illuminating.

The first issue is that simply averaging the absolute temperatures of all available USHCN stations each year is not a very good way to construct a national temperature series.

Although USHCN contains 1,218 designated stations, nowhere near 1,218 stations report in every July. The number of stations with both Tmax and Tmin data increased from only about 528 in 1895 to roughly 1,200 by the 1930s–1960s, then began declining sharply in recent decades:

• 1990: 1,180
• 2000: 1,115
• 2010: 980
• 2020: 779
• 2025: 730
• 2026: 458 so far in the August 12 archive

That creates a compositional problem. If the stations disappearing from the network are climatologically warmer or cooler than those remaining, the simple national average can change even if temperatures at every individual station do not. Note that 2026 data is provisional, as a lot of stations are not yet reported in the dataset file.

Step 1: Calculate station anomalies

To deal with this, I calculated a 1951–1980 July climatology for each individual USHCN station. This was a particularly useful reference period because station coverage was near its peak; 1,217 of the 1,218 stations had sufficient data to calculate a usable climatology.

For every station and every July, I then calculated:

July anomaly = observed July temperature − that station’s own 1951–1980 July mean

This removes most of the changing-station-composition problem, because a hot station disappearing from the network no longer mechanically lowers the national average merely because its absolute climatological temperature was higher.

That made a surprisingly large difference in recent decades.

For July Tmax from 1990–2025:

• simple raw station-average trend: +0.35°F/decade
• station-anomaly trend: +0.55°F/decade
• composition effect: about −0.20°F/decade

From 2000–2025:

• simple raw Tmax trend: only +0.09°F/decade
• station-anomaly trend: +0.34°F/decade
• composition effect: about −0.25°F/decade

Why? Because the climatological July Tmax of the stations actually reporting has declined substantially:

Year	Mean July climatology of reporting Tmax stations
1990	87.39°F
2000	87.43°F
2010	87.31°F
2020	86.96°F
2025	86.88°F

In other words, the modern USHCN reporting network has increasingly become composed of cooler stations. Simply averaging their absolute temperatures therefore introduces an artificial cooling tendency.

The same phenomenon appears in Tmin.

Using an equal-station anomaly calculation, July 2026 came out approximately:

• Tmax: +1.66°F
• Tmin: +3.71°F
• Tavg: +2.68°F

On that basis, 2026 ranked roughly:

• 14th warmest Tmax
• 1st warmest Tmin
• 5th warmest Tavg

But there was still another problem.

Step 2: Geographic weighting

A station in a densely sampled part of Ohio should not carry the same national weight as a station representing a huge area of Nevada, Montana, or Wyoming.

So I took the raw USHCN station anomalies and placed them on a fixed 0.25° CONUS land grid. Each grid cell was assigned the anomaly of its nearest reporting USHCN station, and the resulting cells were area-weighted using the cosine of latitude.

This is essentially a simple Voronoi-style geographic weighting.

Importantly, it does not use NOAA homogenization. It does not alter the raw station observations. It merely prevents regions containing many stations from receiving disproportionately large weight in the national average.

The effect was substantial.

After rebasing our resulting national series to the same 1901–2000 reference used by NCEI, several important Julys looked like this:

Year	Equal-weight raw USHCN	Area-weighted raw USHCN	NCEI
1901	+3.25°F	+2.55°F	+2.60°F
1934	+2.99°F	+2.87°F	+2.72°F
1936	+3.32°F	+3.29°F	+3.14°F
1980	+2.02°F	+2.12°F	+2.09°F
2000	−0.59°F	+0.02°F	+0.22°F
2006	+2.32°F	+2.59°F	+2.76°F
2012	+3.15°F	+2.95°F	+3.10°F
2022	+2.02°F	+2.56°F	+2.76°F
2023	+1.25°F	+1.76°F	+2.02°F
2024	+1.47°F	+1.77°F	+2.07°F
2026	+2.67°F	+3.15°F	+3.26°F

The 1901 result is especially revealing.

Under a naïve equal-station average, 1901 appeared about 0.65°F warmer relative to NCEI. Once the raw observations were geographically weighted, the discrepancy collapsed to about 0.05°F.

The same thing happened at the other end of the record.

Our equal-station calculation put 2026 at only about +2.67°F, compared with NCEI’s +3.26°F. Geographic weighting alone moved the raw-USHCN result to +3.15°F.

No homogenization adjustment was necessary to explain most of that gap.

Final raw-USHCN ranking

Using the geographically weighted raw station anomalies, the leading Julys were:

1. 1936: +3.29°F
2. 2026: +3.15°F
3. 2012: +2.95°F
4. 1934: +2.87°F
5. 2006: +2.59°F
6. 2022: +2.56°F
7. 1901: +2.55°F

NCEI places 2026 slightly ahead of 1936 instead:

• 2026: +3.26°F
• 1936: +3.14°F

So after controlling for station composition and geographic weighting, the difference between our deliberately simple raw-data-only method and NCEI is not some enormous discrepancy.

Our raw calculation has 1936 about 0.15°F warmer than 2026.

NCEI has 2026 about 0.12°F warmer than 1936.

That leaves only about a 0.27°F swing in their relative difference between our raw-data method and the full NCEI analysis.

Now compare the entire records

This was perhaps the most surprising result.

Once the raw USHCN observations are converted to station anomalies and geographically weighted, the resulting curve lies almost directly on top of the official NCEI series.

Across 1895–2026, the mean absolute difference between the two annual July anomaly series is only about 0.11°F.

And remember what went into our series:

• raw USHCN observations
• individual station climatologies
• geographic weighting

That's it.

No NOAA homogenization adjustments were applied.

What does this actually tell us?

This certainly does not demonstrate that every NOAA adjustment is perfect, nor does our simple experiment precisely reproduce NOAA’s methodology. NOAA uses a larger station network, homogenization, and substantially more sophisticated spatial interpolation.

But it does demonstrate something important.

Most of the apparent disagreement between a naïve “raw USHCN” calculation and NOAA/NCEI can be reproduced without changing a single thermometer observation.

Two mundane methodological problems explain an enormous portion of it:

1. Changing station composition
2. Unequal geographic station density

The raw USHCN network has lost hundreds of reporting stations in recent decades, and the stations disappearing have, on average, been climatologically warmer than those remaining. That artificially suppresses recent temperatures if one simply averages absolute station readings.

Meanwhile, equal station weighting gives densely sampled portions of the country far too much influence. Correcting that spatial bias pushes recent hot years upward and, in some cases, early hot years downward.

The transformation of 1901 is particularly instructive:

Naïve raw USHCN: +3.25°F
Geographically weighted raw USHCN: +2.55°F
NCEI: +2.60°F

And for 2026:

Naïve raw USHCN: +2.67°F
Geographically weighted raw USHCN: +3.15°F
NCEI: +3.26°F

So when someone produces a graph of “raw USHCN temperatures” and argues that the difference from NOAA must therefore have been manufactured through data adjustments, there is a very large omitted variable: how the raw data are aggregated in the first place. A simple station-anomaly calculation plus basic geographic weighting — using the unaltered raw observations themselves — gets astonishingly close to the official NCEI record.

I don't know why we are expending energy with this denier BS - they're not going to get it.  Cows would understand this by now; they are too predisposed in their myopic agenda. They spin around in these tiny little realms of tedious and ultimately meaningless insularity, insulating them from seeing/understand the holistic perspective. That kind of fallacy of approach to reality can only be explained by one or two causes:  irreparable stupidity, or, amoral lying. 

Either way ... life is too short to give them all this time. There's no point in arguing with them. 

The objective reality is:  CC is real, humans are causing it. The amount of that role is causing debate?  so what! It doesn't change the fact that the species is at minimum exacerbating (then), which still makes them just as responsible. In either scenario causing or contributing to our demise is just as explicitly culpable.   End discussion

It kind of reminds me of the Samuel Clemens quip. Paraphrasing: 'never argue with a stupid person. It requires bringing you down to their stupid level where they are masters of the craft'

[rclab]

17 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I don't know why we are expending energy with this denier BS - they're not going to get it.  Cows would understand this by now; they are too predisposed in their myopic agenda. They spin around in these tiny little realms that are insular and insulating them from seeing/understand the holistic perspective. That kind of fallacy of approach to reality can only be explained by one or two causes:  irreparable stupidity, or amoral lying.  That's it.

There's no point in arguing with them. 

The objective reality is:  CC is real, humans are causing it. The amount of that role is causing debate?  so what! It doesn't change the fact that the species is at minimum exacerbating (then), which still makes them just as responsible. In either scenario we cause our demise.

It kind of reminds me of the Samuel Clemens quip, paraphrasing 'never argue with a stupid person; in order to do so requires bringing you down to their level where they are masters of the craft'

I saw the light and it was dark. As always …….

[bluewave]

Breaking the July 1936 record was mostly a function of the much warmer minimum temperatures this year.

This July was only the 6th warmest for maximum temperatures behind 1936. But it was the warmest July for minimum temperatures.

So the average of the two put this year in 1st place. Much higher dewpoints these days due to the warmer overall global temperatures which holds more moisture.

So the low temperatures can’t drop as low. Plus the record corn production adds to the dewpoints and warmer minimums in the areas which experienced the worst of the Dust Bowl in the Plains. 
 

 

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/07/27/one-of-the-muggiest-days-on-record-for-the-twin-cities

The highest dew point ever observed in the Twin Cities remains 82 degrees, recorded on July 19, 2011. That event still stands as the local benchmark for tropical humidity.

Across Minnesota, the state record is even more astonishing. In Moorhead, the dew point climbed to an incredible 88 degrees during the 2011 heat wave. That combination of extreme heat and moisture pushed the heat index above 130 degrees.

Only a handful of years have ever produced 80-degree dew points in the Twin Cities:

• 1966

• 1983

• 1995

• 1999

• 2002

• 2005

• 2011

• 2026

With six more hours added to the record books today, 2026 has secured its place alongside some of Minnesota's most memorable humidity events. While air temperatures often get the headlines, dew point is what determines just how oppressive the air feels — and an 80-degree dew point is about as uncomfortable as it gets in the Upper Midwest.

[WEATHER53]

So the nw pacific does have  leaking molten java from the floor bottom. I got laughed out of the room years ago when I suggested that warming is from the bottom up and not the top down due to puny mankind. The planet is dominated by oceans and ice and about 4 % developed and populated which is ridiculous to suggest cow farts and cars are doing that. The planet is a pot of water and those pots  very rarely warm firm the top down 

[A-L-E-K]

you're still alive?

[donsutherland1]

5 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I don't know why we are expending energy with this denier BS - they're not going to get it.  Cows would understand this by now; they are too predisposed in their myopic agenda. They spin around in these tiny little realms of tedious and ultimately meaningless insularity, insulating them from seeing/understand the holistic perspective. That kind of fallacy of approach to reality can only be explained by one or two causes:  irreparable stupidity, or, amoral lying. 

Either way ... life is too short to give them all this time. There's no point in arguing with them. 

The objective reality is:  CC is real, humans are causing it. The amount of that role is causing debate?  so what! It doesn't change the fact that the species is at minimum exacerbating (then), which still makes them just as responsible. In either scenario causing or contributing to our demise is just as explicitly culpable.   End discussion

It kind of reminds me of the Samuel Clemens quip. Paraphrasing: 'never argue with a stupid person. It requires bringing you down to their stupid level where they are masters of the craft'

I agree that they are beyond persuasion. Their belief system is a matter of identity and, in that aspect, essentially theological doctrine. But that's not the point.

The issue is that climate change disinformation is rampant on social media. The news media still fails, as well, often not connecting events to climate change despite a growing body of attribution findings. Even in many cases where the connection is made, they are silent on the predominant cause: the burning of fossil fuels and the major fossil fuel companies' share of cumulative emissions.

As a result, climate change disinformation has swamped credible science. That he science has proved remarkably accurate in projecting the warming, linking the warming to greenhouse gases/the burning of fossil fuels, and identifying potential outcomes in a warming has been drowned out in the deluge of disinformation. Neither basic physics, on which climate change understanding is based, nor the credibility of accurate scientific analysis, has proved an effective antidote to this disinformation.

The outcome, as one paper put it, is a "crisis of truth" when it comes to climate change. The paper goes on to explain:

Beneath this communication chaos lies a more unsettling truth: climate denial is not the absence of knowledge but the production of strategic ignorance. It is a tool of power, protecting entrenched economic interests and reinforcing the status quo. The deliberate distortion of facts, the manufacturing of uncertainty, and the cultivation of distrust are not accidental, they are calculated mechanisms designed to delay action and disarm the public. 

That brings us to this year. The Northern Hemisphere is all but certain to experience its hottest summer on record. July 2026 was the warmest month on record for the contiguous U.S. Globally, it was either tied with July 2024 (NOAA) or the warmest month on record (GISS). Nevertheless, the world remains largely paralyzed and unable to make meaningful progress toward a net zero emissions goal by 2050. Indeed, disruptions to shipments of oil through the Strait of Hormuz are viewed as a far graver problem than the rapidly warming climate is.

Thus, I respectfully disagree with the notion that one should ignore climate change denial. The deniers aren't the intended audience, as their belief system is beyond reason, evidence, and ethics. The general reader, who encounters their disinformation, is the intended audience.

IMO, the prophets and propagandsts of climate change denial and their deep flaws need to be confronted. William Happer: Has never published research on climate. John Clauser: A Nobel Prize in quantum entanglement has nothing to do with climate or climate change. Tony Heller: A Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist who regularly charges the NOAA with data "tampering." Chris Martz: A social media influencer/policy analyst with no climate research to his name and deep struggles with even elementary statistics e.g., he recently railed against "average mean temperature" (sic).

What these four examples have in common is that none of them possess the knowledge, background, understanding, or experience to credibly debunk well-established scientific understanding, much less overturn well-established physical properties of greenhouse gases. Despite lofty claims about credentials, they are mere noisemakers. Nothing more. If left unopposed, they will continue to drown out the scientists and scientific understanding.