Snow, cold, in Saudi Arabia: “worst in 30 years”

According to wire reports, temperatures reached their lowest point in 30 years, reaching to -2°C in the capital, Riyadh, and to -6°C in mountainous regions blanketed by snow.  At least 10 people have died in the country as a weather system driven South from Siberia sent temperatures plummeting. Below are some pictures of snow from that region.

  
click for larger images

Apparently its gotten so bad (or they just aren’t prepared to deal with it) that King Saud ordered that government assistance should be given in the affected areas, which witnessed sub-zero temperatures this week.

I had to laugh at the photo above and the caption:  “Saudi Arabians are used to getting stuck in the sand, but snow is a new challenge for many.” It almosts seems Pythonesque.

Meanwhile, many roads were flooded by heavy rains in the nearby country of Dubai, which attracts sun-hungry tourists with its year-round blue skies. Roofs in some luxury hotels and office blocks were leaking water and several schools asked parents to keep their children home on Wednesday. It’s hard to imagine getting a “rain day” in the middle east.

While I’m enjoying pointing out these uncommon phenomena, I’d also point out that even though both the northern and southern hemispheres have both seen some record cold events in the past 6 months, that doesn’t necessarily equate to “climate change”. Still, something seems afoot as we are seeing more and more events like this. Maybe the massive La Niña now stretching across the Pacific ocean has something to do with this.

Oh but wait…there’s more!

Snow was seen yesterday atop Maui’s Mount Haleakala  - see story

Yeah, somethings up.

How not to measure temperature, part 50. How to make a rural station “urban”

One of the things that happens when your work becomes well known is that people send you things to look at. Such is the case for today’s subject. Here we have a NOAA COOP station which is on the side of a mountain, well away from large cities. Only problem is, they put it right next to a parking lot.

A reader of this blog, Brad Herrick, sent me these photos of the Mt. Charleston weather station on State Route 157 west of Las Vegas.  For those that don’t know, Mt. Charleston is the large mountain to the west that overlooks Las Vegas. NOAA lists it on it’s COOP-A list, meaning that it reports for the climatic database. It’s been in operation since 1949. Its been moved 3 times, but all within about 1/2 mile as the fire station changed and grew.

According to NOAA’s MMS database, here is the description: Elevation, 7600 feet. NV DIV OF FORESTRY FIRE STN KYLE CYN OUTSIDE AND 30 MI NW PO AT LAS VEGAS NV. Topographic Details: RUGGED DEEP CANYON .25 - .5 MILE WIDE, RISING TO PEAKS 3000-5000 FEET HIGHER TO NORTH, SOUTH AND WEST A DISTANCE OF 2 TO 4 MILES. Lat/Lon 36.2597, -115.6452 , COOP ID 265400

Seems pretty rural, with a mental image of “way up in the mountains” if you were researching this station. By James Hansen’s figuring, it would also be a “lights=0″ station since I doubt there is municipal street lighting for this area.

It’s certainly well enough away from the super sized Las Vegas concrete and asphalt heat island.

Here is the view from Google Earth:

click for larger view

Except for a few houses, it certainly looks “rural”.  Any researcher at NCDC or maybe a university that might use this station in some research report would certainly think this station was well away from the building/concrete/asphalt influence of bustling Las Vegas wouldn’t they?

But then we see this:

and this:

and this:

click for larger images

Unfortunately, I don’t have a time series temperature graph of this station to show you since I haven’t found a place at NCDC yet to graph COOP stations that are COOP-A. If anybody knows of such a link, please let me know. 

There’s nothing like convenient parking to convert a rural station to urban. But lets not forget the maintenance of the Stevenson Screen roof (see pic #2 -large), hillside, shade bushes, fire station building revisions, and portable storage unit. When did all that happen? We have no idea.

Surely, it’s easy to disentangle all that from the temperature record. Quick! Somebody create an adjustment equation.

Increased Nacreous Clouds: A sign of colder upper air temperatures

This from www.Spaceweather.com

As January comes to an end, sky watchers in Scandinavia are recovering from a veritable storm of nacreous clouds. After mid-month, hardly a night went by without someone spotting the phenomenon. “It was incredible! They were all over the sky,” says Morton Ross of Oslo, Norway. This picture, taken by Ross on Jan. 25th, shows a typical apparition:

Also known as “Mother of Pearl” clouds, nacreous clouds are peppered with tiny ice crystals that blaze with iridescent color when struck by light from the setting sun. It is these crystals that make nacreous clouds so rare: they require exceptionally low temperatures of minus 85 Celsius (-120 F) to form. Icy nacreous clouds float 9 to 16 miles high, curling and uncurling hypnotically as they are modulated by atmospheric gravity waves.

For much of January, these clouds rolled across the Arctic circle with puzzling regularity. Why the sudden abundance? Is the show over? No one knows. Stay tuned for February!

For more, see the 2008 Nacreous Cloud Gallery For the science behind nacreous clouds, please see this entry in Atmospheric Optics.

As for temperatures at high latitudes, its -35°F in Saskatoon at the surface this morning, so there’s a chance we’ll see more nacreous clouds in days ahead.

Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities - The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio

NOTE: This post is the second in the series from Dr. Roy Spencer of the National Space Science and Technology Center at University of Alabama, Huntsville. The first, made last Friday, was called Atmospheric CO2 Increases: Could the Ocean, Rather Than Mankind, Be the Reason?

Due to the high interest and debate his first post has generated, Dr. Spencer asked me to make this second one, and I’m happy to oblige.

Here is part2 of Dr. Spencer’s essay on CO2 without any editing or commentary on my part.

(Side note: Previously, I erroneously reported that Dr. Spencer was out of the country. Not so. That was my mistake and a confusion with an email autoresponse from another person named “Roy”. Hence this new update.)

---

More CO2 Peculiarities: The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio

Roy W. Spencer

January 28, 2008

In my previous post, I showed evidence for the possibility that there is a natural component to the rise in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Briefly, the inter-annual co-variability in Southern Hemisphere SST and Mauna Loa CO2 was more than large enough to explain the long-term trend in CO2.  Of course, some portion of the Mauna Loa increase must be anthropogenic, but it is not clear that it is entirely so. 

Well, now I’m going to provide what appears to be further evidence that there could be a substantial natural source of the long-term increase in CO2.

One of the purported signatures of anthropogenic CO2 is the carbon isotope ratio, C13/C12.   The “natural” C13 content of CO2 is just over 1.1%.  In contrast, the C13 content of the CO2 produced by burning of fossil fuels is claimed to be slightly smaller - just under 1.1%. 

The concentration of C13 isn’t reported directly, it is given as “dC13″, which is computed as:

                        “dC13 = 1000* {([C13/C12]sample / [C13/C12]std ) - 1

The plot of the monthly averages of this index from Mauna Loa is shown in Fig. 1.

How not to measure temperature, part 49. Alaska’s COOP Stations

Earlier I wrote up an essay on the NOAA climate station at Cordova, AK.

Click thumbnail at left for a larger image. 

  
This station was directly next to the village diesel power plant. That station also happens to be part of the NASA GISS surface temperature record used for climate research. The problem is the proximity to nearby human caused heat sources, which may not be accurately adjusted for in the record. Of course the real issue is that if the stations were properly setup and maintained by NOAA, paying attention to their own 100 foot rule, such potential bias would not be an issue. Today I’d like to show you a few other NOAA climate stations in Alaska.

Click thumbnails below for larger images.

Thanks to John Papineau for these photographs

English Bay - note the MMTS temperature sensor within about 1 foot of the building.No cold winter nights for this sensor!

Moose Pass - note the concrete structure which is a fish hatchery NCDC record says: HATCHERY, OUTSIDE & 3 MI NW OF PO AT MOOSE PASS, AK

Susitna Landing - note proximity to building this was installed on May 21st, 2003 NCDC record says: FLAT GRAVEL AREA NEAR CONFLUENCE OF KASHWITNA AND SUSITNA RIVERS. How would a researcher know about the building proximity from this?

Seward 19N - note proximity to building NCDC Record says: OBSERVERS HOME, OUTSIDE & 19.5 MI N OF PO AT SEWARD, AK Again, how would a researcher know about the building proximity?

Seward #2 - note proximity to street and shading issues. You can see the station location in Google Earth.

Tutka Bay - note proximity to building and weathering of old Stevenson Screen shelter.

As I’ve been saying, the MMTS temperature sensor and it’s cable is systematically forcing measurements closer to human influences. They problem clearly is not unique to the continental United States as these photos from Alaska demonstrate.

In all of Alaska’s open wilderness, are these truly representative of the climate? It seems that every station is close to the small packets of towns and villages that dot Alaska, and necessarily so, since a human observer is required to read and record the thermometer.

Surely though, a better job at station siting could have been done.

UPDATED: Roy Spencer on how Oceans are Driving CO2

NOTE: Earlier today I posted a paper from Joe D’Aleo on how he has found strong correlations between the oceans multidecadal oscillations, PDO and AMO, and surface temperature, followed by finding no strong correlation between CO2 and surface temperatures. See that article here:

Warming Trend: PDO And Solar Correlate Better Than CO2

Now within hours of that, Roy Spencer of the National Space Science and Technology Center at University of Alabama, Huntsville,  sends me and others this paper where he postulates that the ocean may be the main driver of CO2.

In the flurry of emails that followed, Joe D’Aleo provided this graph of CO2 variations correlated by El Nino/La Nina /Volcanic event years which is relevant to the discussion. Additionally for my laymen readers, a graph of CO2 solubility in water versus temperature is also relevant and both are shown below:

  
Click for full size images

Additionally, I’d like to point out that former California State Climatologist Jim Goodridge posted a short essay on this blog, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Variation, that postulated something similar.

UPDATE: This from Roy on Monday 1/28/08 see new post on C12 to C13 ratio here

I want to (1) clarify the major point of my post, and (2) report some new (C13/C12 isotope) results:

1.  The interannual relationship between SST and dCO2/dt is more than enough to explain the long term increase in CO2 since 1958.  I’m not claiming that ALL of the Mauna Loa increase is all natural…some of it HAS to be anthropogenic…. but this evidence suggests that SST-related effects could be a big part of the CO2 increase.

2.  NEW RESULTS: I’ve been analyzing the C13/C12 ratio data from Mauna Loa.  Just as others have found, the decrease in that ratio with time (over the 1990-2005 period anyway) is almost exactly what is expected from the depleted C13 source of fossil fuels.  But guess what? If you detrend the data, then the annual cycle and interannual variability shows the EXACT SAME SIGNATURE.  So, how can decreasing C13/C12 ratio be the signal of HUMAN emissions, when the NATURAL emissions have the same signal???

-Roy

Here is Roy Spencer’s essay, without any editing or commentary:

---

Atmospheric CO2 Increases:

Could the Ocean, Rather Than Mankind, Be the Reason?

by

Roy W. Spencer

1/25/2008

            This is probably the most provocative hypothesis I have ever (and will ever) advance:  The long-term increases in carbon dioxide concentration that have been observed at Mauna Loa since 1958 could be driven more than by the ocean than by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.

            Most, if not all, experts in the global carbon cycle will at this point think I am totally off my rocker.  Not being an expert in the global carbon cycle, I am admittedly sticking my neck out here.  But, at a minimum, the results I will show make for a fascinating story - even if my hypothesis is wrong.  While the evidence I will show is admittedly empirical, I believe that a physically based case can be made to support it.

            But first, some acknowledgements. Even though I have been playing with the CO2 and global temperature data for about a year, it was the persistent queries from a Canadian engineer, Allan MacRae, who made me recently revisit this issue in more detail.  Also, the writings of Tom V. Segalstad, a Norwegian geochemist, were also a source of information and ideas about the carbon cycle.

Warming Trend: PDO And Solar Correlate Better Than CO2

Note: This is my analysis of a new paper by Joe D’Aleo, I’ve tried to simplify and explain certain terms where possible so that  it can reach the broadest audience of readers. You can read the entire paper here.

Joe D’Aleo, an AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist, one of the founders of The Weather Channel and who operates the website ICECAP took it upon himself to do an analysis of the newly released USHCN2 surface temperature data set and compare it against measured trends of CO2, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and Solar Irradiance. to see which one matched better.

It’s a simple experiment; compare the trends by running an R² correlation on the different data sets. The result is a coefficient of determination that tells you how well the trend curves match. When the correlation is 1.0, you have a perfect match between two curves. The lower the number, the lower the trend correlation.

Understanding R2 correlation
R2 Coefficient	Match between data trends
1.0	Perfect
.90	Good
.50	Fair
.25	Poor
0 or negative	no match at all

If CO2 is the main driver of climate change this last century, it stands to reason that the trend of surface temperatures would follow the trend of CO2, and thus the R² correlation between the two trends would be high. Since NCDC has recently released the new USHCN2 data set for surface temperatures, which promises improved detection and removal of false trends introduced by change points in the data, such as station moves, it seemed like an opportune time to test the correlation.

At the same time,  R² correlation tests were run on other possible drivers of climate; Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and Total Solar Irradiance (TSI).

First lets look at the surface temperature record. Here we see the familiar plot of temperature over the last century as it has been plotted by NASA GISS:

 

The temperature trend is unmistakeably upwards, and the change over the last century is about +0.8°C. 

Now lets look at the familiar carbon dioxide graph, known as the Keeling Curve, which plots atmospheric CO2 concentration measure at the Mauna Loa Observatory:

CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center - Oak Ridge National Lab) also has a data set for this that includes CO2 data back to the last century (1895) extracted from ice core samples.  That CO2 data set was plotted against the new USHCN2 surface temperature data as shown below:

A comparison of the 11year running mean of the USHCN version 2 annual mean temperatures with the running mean of CO2 from CDIAC. An r-squared of 0.44 was found.

The results were striking to say the least. An R² correlation of only 0.44 was determined, placing it between fair and poor in the fit between the two data sets.

How not to measure temperature, part 48. NOAA cites errors with Baltimore’s Rooftop USHCN Station

I happened across a NOAA internal training manual a couple of weeks ago that contained a photo of a USHCN official climate station that I thought I’d never get a photo of.  The Baltimore Customs House.

 
Baltimore USHCN station circa 1990’s photo courtesy NOAA, click for more images

What is interesting about this station, is that it is a rooftop station, like we’ve seen in San Francisco, Eureka, and many other US cities. Rooftop stations are suspected to impart a warm bias to the surface temperature records, for obvious reasons. The NWS/NOAA has been reluctant to change these stations to ground-level, wanting to keep a continuous record. The Baltimore USHCN station closed in 1999 and has not been replaced at this location.

Public Service Announcement: Stroke Recognition

A friend from my coffee group sent this about recognizing the signs of a stroke and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I checked it out to make sure it was not another Internet hoax and I’m happy to report it is valid.

If everyone can remember this simple STR procedure, lives could be saved.

Some background -

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) …..she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been  taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a  stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don’t die…. they end up in a  helpless, hopeless condition instead.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke… totally . He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Remember these ‘3′ steps:  STR. It’s the first three letters of the word STRoke.

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of situational awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe  brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke .

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple
questions:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE.
T * Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
       (i.e. It is sunny out today)
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

See References: American Stroke Foundation, Stroke Awareness.org

New Sign of a Stroke ——– Stick out Your Tongue

Ask the person to ’stick’ out his tongue.. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other , that is also an indication of a stroke.

The Climate Change and Wine Conference

From the days of Wine and Gore department: The Second annual Climate Change and Wine Conference is scheduled for Feburary 15th and 16th in Madrid, Spain. Al Gore will be the featured speaker.

http://www.climatechangeandwine.com/eng/index.php

SALUD!

Wine snobbery and climate change together.  What’s not to like?

No word yet on whether California wineries will be attending.