2009 Coldest Winter Ever?

~
Dave in SETX,

re: "Coldest. Winter. Ever."

We've always been big fans of NOAA & its National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) & National Weather Service (NWS) & all the honest, dedicated scientists who work diligently to inform concerned citizens about the weather & climate change, Dave.

As far as the "coldest winter ever", as you say, Dave, you may want to check with your Texas State Climatologist instead of cherry-picking unnamed, unlinked sources again (puleez tell us it's not Scooter Libby).

The coldest winter ever came in 1977-1978, he said, which averaged 6.3 degrees below normal. Nielsen-Gammon said the 13-county southeast Texas climate region has averaged between 5 and 6 degrees below normal since Dec. 1. Second-coldest ever

Or try Dr. n-g @ his TAMU office.

February 2010 was a month of record breaking events for the state of Texas, and National Weather Service meteorologists believe this winter has been the coldest winter Texas has seen in 25 years. Current Texas Monthly Summary: February 2010

And while you're there, Dave, be sure to checkout the Societal Impacts of Climate on Texas.

NOAA: U.S. Winter and February Cooler Than Average

And you & your greenhouse furnaces & propane tanks can expect lots more extreme hot & cold weather events, floods & fires, & higher storm surges from stronger hurricanes as you continue to release carbon emissions into the atmosphere & hydrosphere which continue to heat up & destabilize SETX climate, if not the entire planet.

U.S. Climate Change Science Program: Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate

But fret not, Dave, as another notable local recently wrote in a SETX newspaper:

"Summer's coming. Some preliminary outlooks show July, August and September being a bit warmer than normal."

Blizzards of AGW

~
Dr. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground has a word or two about heavy snowfall in a warming world:

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) ... has put out some excellent peer-reviewed science on climate change that, in my view, is as authoritative as the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In 2009, the USGCRP put out its excellent U.S. Climate Impacts Report, summarizing the observed and forecast impacts of climate change on the U.S. The report's main conclusion about cold season storms was "Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent".

Cooling bias? Watts up with that?

*
Say, speaking of anti-science denial, did you have the good fortune to catch Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground & how the scientific analysis of the actual data shows Anthony Watts' with his head up his WUWT?

You didn't? Well, let's take a look at it together, shall we?

Dr. Jeff Masters posted his astute assessment of Watts & his XOM-funded co-conspirators-in-denial on his WunderBlog just the other day for all to see.

While Watts' publication by the Heartland Institute is a valuable source of information on siting problems of the U.S. network of weather stations, the publication did not undergo peer-review--the process whereby three anonymous scientists who are experts in the field review a manuscript submitted for publication, and offer criticisms on the scientific validity of the results, resulting in revisions to the original paper or outright rejection. The Heartland Institute is an advocacy organization that accepts money from corporate benefactors such as the tobacco industry and fossil fuel industry, and publishes non-peer reviewed science that inevitably supports the interests of the groups paying for the studies. Watts did not actually analyze the data to see if taking out the poorly sited surface stations would have a significant impact on the observed 1.1°F increase in U.S. temperatures over the past century. His study would never have been publishable in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

So the dedicated expert climate scientists over at NOAA did a scientific study, peer-reviewed no less.

Fortunately, a proper analysis of the impact of these poorly-sited surface stations on the U.S. historical temperature record has now been done by Dr. Matthew Menne and co-authors at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

And Watt do you think the data, including Watts' own surfacestations.org's, actually shows when analyzed using scientific methods?

A cooling bias, we sh*t you not.

Dr. Menne's study computed the average daily minimum and maximum temperatures from the good sites and poor sites. While the poor sites had a slightly warmer average minimum temperature than the good sites (by 0.03°C), the average maximum temperature measured at the poor sites was significantly cooler (by 0.14°C) than the good sites. As a result, overall average temperatures measured at the poor sites were cooler than the good sites. This is the opposite of the conclusion reached by Anthony Watts in his 2009 Heartland Institute publication. New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one

Watts up with that!?!
*