Or do record-breaking temperatures prove global warming is happening? No, they don’t. But that’s what the alarmists will claim every time there are record-breaking temperatures. And it doesn’t have to be in the summer either. Funny, though, record breaking cold days don’t count against global warming. Besides that, record-breaking high temps don’t mean anything other than we have not recorded temperatures for long enough.
What is the definition of a heat wave? There really isn’t a formal definition, but Environment Canada say it is typical with more than 2 days in a row above 32C. Thus a “heat wave” consists of days when the summer TMax is at its highest for a prolonged period.
In 2003 there was a heat wave in Europe. The alarmists went nuts. Even New Scientist said this:
At least 35,000 people died as a result of the record heatwave that scorched Europe in August 2003, says an environmental think tank.
The Earth Policy Institute (EPI), based in Washington DC, warns that such deaths are likely to increase, as “even more extreme weather events lie ahead”.
In 2004 Nature Magazine had a piece where they claimed:
The summer of 2003 was probably the hottest in Europe since at latest ad 1500 and unusually large numbers of heat-related deaths were reported in France, Germany and Italy.
Wow, it must have been really bad in 2003! Interesting, however, in the last 12 years we’ve heard nothing more about hot temperatures there or anywhere else except in one case, Russia. Why?
Because the 2003 heat wave wasn’t anything of the extent they claim. It wasn’t even Europe wide. It was confined to a few days around Paris.
The next graph is from data I downloaded from France’s meteorological organization. It shows the range of Tmax throughout the summer months.
The top line is the highest temps for all years except 2003. The blue line is the lowest TMax temperature excluding 2003. The orange lines contain 65% of all temps (Standard Deviation). The thicker black line is the 2003 temps for every day. Notice for most of the summer 2003 was well within the normal variation. You can see the heat wave with the clear bump at the beginning of August. But that lasted only a few days and it was right back down.
The claim of Germany also suffering is completely false. German, specifically Berlin, temps on those days was perfectly normal. With 2004 the second coolest on record!
But do record breaking temps tell us the world is getting hotter? No. But of course the alarmists claim they do.
Aug 23, 2004
“Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research say global warming will bring about more frequent and more intense heat waves in the United States and Europe.”July 8, 2010
“Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.”This Science paper in 2004, 11 years ago now, claimed:
“Even with these uncertainties, the likely outcome is more frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, and related impacts (such as wild fires, heat stress, vegetation changes, and sea level rise) that will be regionally dependent.”Undated from NOAA
“more intense, more frequent and longer-lasting heat waves.”“Model results suggest that under enhanced atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, summer temperatures are likely to increase by over 4C on average, with a corresponding increase in the frequency of severe heat waves.”
This should be enough sampling to make the statement that AGW theory predicts there will be more heat waves in the summers ahead. (notice some are 10 years old, still waiting…)
This continues to this day, with the claim that 2014 was the hottest year ever. Except it wasn’t. It was 0.01C warmer with an error of .1C NASA admitted they were only 38% sure 2014 was the hottest.
Temperatures have been reliably kept for not more than 100 years. And certainly not all over a country. Canada, for example, only had a dozen stations in 1900. Records are kept as accurate as 0.1C. Now, if a July temp can range normally between 15C to 35C that’s 20 degrees, or 200 possible measurements. How many years would it take to fill them all?
On the first day of keeping records, every day is a record breaker. As the days and years progress, the number of record-breaking days drops off in a decay curve. Obviously the further you go in keeping records, the rarer record-breaking temps become.
So how long would it take to fill every possible 1/10C temp such that there are never any more record breakers? Keep in mind that the temps will follow a bell curve, such that the majority will be within a narrow range, with the extremes very rare. I wrote a quick program to do that, and it’s some 3000 years. And that’s just one location, add in the thousands of locations around the nation, and somewhere there will be record breaking days, especially if the station is relatively new.
So what is actually happening in the real world? The only way to know that is to get the raw data and check it yourself.
I downloaded all the daily data for just about every Environment Canada station all the way back to 1900. Few stations have a full data set, but Environment Canada Station 4333, Ottawa, Ontario, does. This is a graph of TMax in July.
Notice it’s falling. Hottest days are getting fewer, not more often. The hottest temperatures were between 1910 and 1920. But what is interesting is the record breaking temps for July.
Each bar is one day in July from the 1st to the 31st. The dates on each bar represent the first year that temperature was reached.
It is clear that the early 1900’s dominate the record setting temps. Only 6 of the 31 records are after 1950. The all time high of 37.8C was July 4, 1921 and July 30, 1916. Notice the latest year, 1995 (July 14) is one of the lowest temps in the list, yet it was a record breaker on that day.
One year July 17 will hit 35C, a record-breaker not seen since 1909. It will be heralded as proof the climate is getting hotter, guaranteed. Of course it will be nothing of the sort.
But this is just cherry-picking one location, the alarmists will claim. But that’s what they are doing when they claim a single city had a record-breaking hot day which they claim shows the world is getting hotter.
The fact of the matter is that record-breaking temps don’t mean anything other than we have not been keeping records long enough to fill all possible normal temperatures.
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