With the 101F maximum temperature yesterday (a new daily record), Denver has hit at least 100F 8 days already in 2012. That might not sound like much to folks in Arizona or Texas, but 100F days are rare in Denver due to both our latitude and altitude.
As the 2nd link is kind enough to describe, the 8 days now exceeds 2005, which saw 7 such days. One big difference between 2005 and 2012 is that in 2005, the 7 days of 100F+ heat occurred near the end of July, not prior to July 4th. Put simply, not only is this heat wave anomalous in and of itself, but the timing of the heat wave is especially anomalous. As I wrote in the post yesterday, June 2012 was the warmest June on record for Denver by a significant margin: +7.6F. June 2012 beat out the previous record average June temperature by 1.5F (1994). That is a significant margin of heat over an entire month. It also follows an anomalously warm May and April.
There is good news: the string of consecutive 90F+ days might end this weekend. Any temperature relief may not be accompanied by precipitation relief, which is also desperately needed.
Yesterday’s high of 101F added to the total number of days of 100F+ temperatures: to date, there are now 7. Last week, there were 5 days in a row of 100F+ heat, matching the all-time record for Denver. The streak included 2 105F readings, which tied for the all-time hottest temperature recorded for Denver. There was also a 100F+ reading a few days prior to that streak. For completeness, I want to point out that the 27th through 30th of June weren’t much cooler: it was 97, 97, 98, and 99 on those four days, so we didn’t miss 100 by much.
Here are a few pictures demonstrating the intensity and extent of the heat that not only affected Denver, but much of the High Plains prior to the impacts east of the Mississippi over the weekend:
Figure 1. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for July 1, 2012.
Figure 2. Plot of surface maximum temperatures by station for July 1, 2012.
Figure 3. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for June 30, 2012.
Figure 4. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for June 29, 2012.
Figure 5. Plot of surface maximum temperatures by station for June 26, 2012. This is one of the two dates that Denver’s temperature tied for the all-time recorded high of 105F.
So far this year, we are in the middle of a 10-day streak. Today, the temperature has already been over 90 for over 4 hours (now 2:30P local) and the forecast calls for 90F+ for at least the next 5 days.
I couldn’t find records on the average number of 100F days in Denver in a year. I would venture a guess and say that is because the number is less than one. I’ll do some more digging and see if I can find out one way or the other.
Climate Projections
It wasn’t that long ago that I first saw projections of potential future climate maps for the US and didn’t think I could imagine what it would be to live through such conditions. I’m sure there are many people who either similarly couldn’t imagine it because it hasn’t happened yet or who are simply unaware of such projections. Take a look at the following graphic:
Figure 6. Projection for 2090-2099 of the number of weeks per year where maximum daily temperatures exceed 100F. This projection used the A1FI SRES scenario, which best represents the globe’s current emissions path.
For the sake of conversation, I will assume that Denver has so far this year experienced 1 week (7 days) of 100F+ temperatures, and will further assume that no additional 100F days will occur in the rest of the year. Under the A1FI scenario, by the end of this century, such a year would be considered relatively cool!
This shift toward more extreme temperatures can also be represented in this graphical manner:
This graphic shows that the increase in average temperature does not have to be that large in magnitude in order for a sizable number of events at the tail of a distribution (e.g., temperature) to occur.
May’s global average temperatures were 0.65°C (1.17°F) above normal (1951-1980), according to NASA. The warmest regions on Earth are exactly where climate models have been projecting the most warmth to occur for years: high latitudes (especially within the Arctic Circle in May 2012). The past three months have a +0.56°C temperature anomaly. And the latest 12-month period (Jun 2011 – May 2012) had a +0.52°C temperature anomaly.
According to NOAA, May’s global average temperatures were 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century mean of 14.8°C (58.6°F). NOAA’s global temperature anomaly map for May (duplicated below) reinforces the message: high latitudes continue to warm at a faster rate than the mid- or low-latitudes. Unfortunately in May 2012, the Northern Hemisphere was almost entirely warmer than normal. The extreme warmth over Siberia is especially worrisome due to the vast methane reserves locked into the tundra and under the seabed near the region. Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,which is the leading cause of the warmth we’re now witnessing. As I discussed in the comments in a recent post, the warming signal from methane likely hasn’t been captured yet since the yearly natural variability and the CO2-caused warming signals are much stronger. It is likely that we will not detect the methane signal for many more years. Of additional concern are the very warm conditions found over Greenland.
Figure 1. Global temperature anomaly map for May 2012 from NOAA.
These observations are also worrisome for the following reason: the globe is still exiting the latest La Niña event:
As the second time series graph (labeled NINO3.4) shows, the last La Niña event hit its highest (most negative) magnitude in December 2011. Since then, SSTs have slowly warmed back toward a 0C anomaly (y-axis). La Niña is a cooling event of the tropical Pacific Ocean that has effects across the globe. It is therefore significant that the past few months’ global temperatures continued to rank in or near the top-5 warmest in the modern era. You can see the effect on global temperatures that this last La Niña had via this NASA time series.
As the globe returns to ENSO-neutral conditions this summer and early fall, how will global temperatures respond? Remember that global temperatures typically trail ENSO conditions by 3-6 months: the recent tropical Pacific warming trend should therefore help boost global temperatures back to their most natural state (i.e., without an ENSO signal on top of it). Looking further into the future, what will next year’s temperatures be as the next El Niño develops?
According to data released by NASA and NOAA this month, April 2012 ranked among the top 5 warmest Aprils on record: NASA recorded the 4th (tied) warmest April in its dataset; NOAA recorded the 5th warmest April in its dataset. The two agencies have slightly different analysis techniques, which actually helps to reinforce the results from each other.
The details:
April’s global average temperatures were 0.56°C above normal (1951-1980), according to NASA. The warmest regions on Earth are exactly where climate models have been projecting the most warmth to occur for years: high latitudes (especially within the Arctic Circle in April 2012). The past three months have a +0.47°C temperature anomaly. And the latest 12-month period (May 2011 – Apr 2012) had a +0.49°C temperature anomaly.
According to NOAA, April’s global average temperatures were 0.65°C (1.17°F) above the 20th century mean of 13.7°C (56.7°F). NOAA’s global temperature anomaly map for April reinforces the message: high latitudes continue to warm at a faster rate than the mid- or low-latitudes. The extreme warmth over Siberia is especially worrisome due to the vast methane reserves locked into the tundra and under the seabed near the region. Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,which is the leading cause of the warmth we’re now witnessing. As I discussed in the comments in a recent post, the warming signal from methane likely hasn’t been captured yet since the yearly natural variability and the CO2-caused warming signals are much stronger. It is likely that we will not detect the the methane signal for many more years.
According to data released by NASA and NOAA this month, June 2011 ranked among the top 10 warmest Junes on record: NASA recorded the 8th warmest June in its dataset; NOAA recorded the 7th warmest June in its dataset. The two agencies have slightly different analysis techniques, which actually helps to reinforce the results from each other.
The details:
June’s global average temperatures were 0.50°C above normal (1951-1980), according to NASA. The warmest regions on Earth are exactly where climate models have been projecting the most warmth to occur for years: high latitudes (think Arctic & Antarctic Circles). The past three months have a +0.49°C temperature anomaly. And the latest 12-month period (Jul 2010 – Jun 2011) had a +0.52°C temperature anomaly. Additionally, the March-April-May period of 2011 tied for the 7th warmest on record.
According to NOAA, June’s global average temperatures were 0.58°C (1.04°F) above the 20th century mean of 15.5°C (59.9°F). NOAA’s global temperature anomaly map reinforces the message: high latitudes are warming at a faster rate than the mid- or low-latitudes. The extreme warmth over Siberia is especially worrisome due to the vast methane reserves locked into the tundra and under the seabed near the region. Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the leading cause of the warmth we’re now witnessing.
These placements high on the list of recorded temperatures come at a time when the recent strong La Nina is coming to an end (which means anomalously cool Pacific waters return to normal temperatures), and when solar irradiance remains at relatively low levels as the most recent solar cycle continues to ramp up. Recall that a favorite talking point of Deniers is the sun remains the only important component of climate system drivers. This has been proven false, as 2010, tied for the warmest year on record with 2005, occurred when solar output was at its most recent minimum. Humans have become the dominant forcing mechanism – a role that doesn’t look likely to end within the next 50-100 years.
Many future Junes will have the opportunity to pass this year’s values. That’s because the overwhelming majority of heat that has been absorbed in the climate system has been stored in the world’s oceans:
That heat will eventually be released into the atmosphere, making the surface warmer and warmer year after year, decade after decade. Right now, the atmosphere is being affected by heat that was absorbed by the ocean 50-100 years ago. The heat absorbed from 1980-current won’t really impact conditions until 2030-2060. The heat wave impacting the U.S. this year? That will likely become commonplace by mid-century. Think about what kind of extreme weather conditions will occur then.
One region where global warming is starting to really make its influence felt is Australia. They have experienced a deep and long drought in the past decade and what Australian officials called “biblical” floods in 2010. Those floods were caused by rains from storm systems that had passed over record warm seas. So what does the country do in response? Well, by continuing to listen to the same “free-marketeers” that sent the rest of the world into the Great Recession in 2007/2008, they decided that the greatest threat facing their country was their deficit. In so doing, they decided that cutting A$220 million from their Solar Flagships program, set up in 2009 to be able to provide 20% renewable power by 2020 would be good policy.
Pay less now and guarantee that more will have to be paid later. What programs will Australia cut in the future (because we all know the rich pay too damn much in taxes already) in order to deal with worsening global warming effects because the Australians of today decided they didn’t want to have deal with it?
If you encounter national news with any regularity, you’ve probably heard separate news stories that are very much connected. The first are the record wildfires plaguing Texas – while relatively few in number, the acreage they’ve burned has set a number of records. The wildfires are accompanied by record drought conditions. The extreme drought conditions cover a large majority (73.73%) of Texas as of May 3, 2011, as the figure below from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows. Exceptional drought conditions now affect a whopping 25.96% of Texas. No part of the state is doing better than abnormally dry this week, which is actually somewhat of an improvement over conditions a week ago.
Combine this terrible news with the ongoing saga of record flooding occurring across the middle and southern Mississippi River as well as water sources that feed the river. Depending on the specific location, this is either the highest the river has ever been or comes in at a close 2nd place. Those 2nd place finishes are largely a result of decades of levee construction designed to prevent flooding in population centers. In order to spare those places, planned destruction of levees has taken place in selected locales. The high rivers and flooding are expected to affect the region for weeks to months to come. Look at the before and after picture near Memphis, TN.
These sets of simultaneous disasters have preliminary cost estimates of hundreds of millions of dollars. That figure is likely to rise.
What’s causing these disasters? The effects of the strong La Nina of 2010-2011 that is currently subsiding. These effects are likely to continue for a few more months before conditions return to a more normal state. Underlying the La Nina effects is, of course, global warming. These type of conditions have been projected to occur for years. And now the important part: as bad as things are today, they are only likely to get worse in the years and decades ahead. Precipitation patterns are expected to grow in intensity but fall in frequency. That means fewer days with rain every year, but when the rain does come, it will come hard and fast. Worsening drought conditions are likely to spread across the country’s interior. Those conditions are likely to be interspersed with record rainfall and record flooding.
The science has indicated that these conditions would occur. The only thing that was mis-projected was the timing: these conditions weren’t supposed to occur for another decade or two. These conditions will probably grow less severe in the months ahead. That’s the nature of both the climate system and weather conditions over time. As stated above, the waning La Nina should allow “normal” weather patterns to return by this fall. What won’t go away are the new base conditions from which daily weather and future El Ninos and La Ninas exist. The next flood or drought or wildfire season may not be as bad as this one. In fact, they probably won’t be. But the next 10 or 100 floods, droughts and wildfire seasons are likely to be worse, on average, than this one because of the man-made global warming conditions that continue to worsen because of our decision not to act. Those next sets of disasters will only grow more expensive in terms of lives lost, crops lost, towns affected and ecosystems permanently altered.
The point at which we realize those costs are too high and the cost of taking action on global warming has always been lower will mark a momentous change in our societies. The bad news is that change will not instantly reduce the severity of disasters yet to come – decades’ worth of warming will still exist in the climate system. If you don’t like this drought or this wildfire season or this flooding, the solution is clear: it’s time to stop polluting our planet with man-made greenhouse gases.
Global warming is causing dramatic enough shifts in temperature and precipitation such that downstream effects are starting to show up across the globe. I picked up the following from an economics blog, but wanted to focus on the likely underlying causality to make a point about the future (source):
Dry conditions extending to Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado may cut crop yields in the U.S., the world’s largest exporter, as too much moisture threatens fields in North Dakota and in Canada. Wheat futures in Chicago are up 50 percent in the past year, after drought in Russia and floods in Australia hurt output and sent global food prices surging. Wholesale beef reached a record this week, and the U.S. cattle herd in January was the smallest since 1958.
Texas is facing its worst drought conditions in 44 years. Meanwhile, the northern plains have had too much moisture. As I’ve pointed out before, the Russian drought helped spark the civil unrest that has erupted across the Middle East and northern Africa in recent months. Floods in Australia, from “average” thunderstorms and some of the strongest landfalling hurricanes on record, have exacerbated the problem. Now North American crops and meat stocks are suffering.
Part of the cause behind all of this is the effects of global warming. This is what “just a 1F rise in global surface temperatures” means when the global trend manifests locally. There is another 1F future warming that will occur, even if we stopped our greenhouse gas pollution problem tomorrow. How much more warming; how many additional effects are we locking into the climate system because we’re addicted to dirty energy?
These stories will not stop or even meaningfully slow down any time soon. Instead, the scope and magnitude of temperature and precipitation extremes will continue to increase. The headlines of tomorrow will not look good, to put it mildly.
After the Arctic, it can be argued that Australia has acquired the non-flattering distinction of being impacted more by the first set of global warming effects than most places on Earth. Australia suffered from widespread and severe drought during most of the 2000′s. As projected, when rain has fallen, it has started to fall in greater quantities at once, followed by long stretches of little to no precipitation. This was especially evident in December 2010 and January 2011 when historic floods impacted an area of northeast Australia larger than the area of France and Germany combined. 2010 was the warmest year in Australian history; meanwhile the Southern Hemisphere was warmer during the 2000′s than the 1990′s, which were warmer than the 1980′s, and so on back through the modern era. And then this week, a tropical cyclone nearly the size of the continental United States hit northeast Australia. Top winds at landfall were measured to be near 125mph, the strongest storm to make landfall on Australia in over 100 years. As global warming effect take further hold, storms of this intensity will likely become more common.
By the time these kinds of effects occur to the U.S. with any degree of regularity, it will be too late to prevent further worsening of global warming and its effects. Unfortunately, it’s looking like it will take persistent impacts on Americans daily lives before enough of us decide to take action to make an eventual difference. Because we have refused to pay attention to the effects for so long, taking action will be many times more expensive and will actually be much less effective than if action had started taking place 30-40 years ago.
NOAA released their November Global Analysis about a week ago. That was a couple of weeks after NASA released their November analysis. I’m not sure if this was due to data quality control issues, but the result is in line with NASA’s: November 2010 was very warm globally. NOAA’s methodology differs from NASA’s, which makes comparison between the two a good exercise.
According to NOAA, November 2010 was the 2nd warmest in their dataset (131 years long), slightly behind November 2004. NASA, in contrast, reported that November 2010 was the warmest in their dataset. Neither is more correct than the other. If a large discrepancy in analyzed temperatures appeared between the two, there would be cause for concern. But both methodologies are producing quite similar results, especially over climatic time periods of multiple decades.
Some numbers:
NOAA recorded a +1.24°F (+0.69°C) temperature anomaly over land and ocean in November 2010. They recorded a +1.30°F anomaly during November 2004. 2010′s global temperature anomaly “suffered” from La Nina, which cooled the tropical Pacific. Largely as a result of this, global ocean temperatures were +0.70°F, which tied 1987 and 2008 for the 10th warmest in the NOAA record. Land temperatures were an astounding +2.74°F warmer than usual. That beat out 2004′s +2.41°F anomaly.
I want to draw attention to the Northern Hemispheric land temperature anomalies for November 2010. The previous record was observed in 2001: +2.84°F. November 2010 set a new record: +3.55°F! That is neither beating the previous record by a slim margin nor is it indicative of the climate zombies’ favorite mantra, “global cooling”. You don’t set hemispheric-wide temperature records for an entire month when the globe is cooling, not when the records only last a handful of years.
The global ocean temperatures are worth mentioning again. Even with a moderate to strong La Nina in place in the previous handful of months affecting the Pacific Ocean, the 10th warmest ocean temperature anomalies on record were observed. Put another way: the relatively strong signal of El Nino/La Nina is likely now being dominated by the growing signal of global warming. Will fluctuations occur from year to year? Of course they will. Novembers between 2007 and 2010 are a good example. A relatively wide range of global ocean temperature anomalies were recorded. But each of them were larger than the similar measurements during the 1990s except for 1997 and 1998, when the strongest El Nino on record occurred.
NOAA also released seasonal and year-to-date numbers. From September through November, global temperature anomalies were +1.04°F, the 6th warmest in their records. From January through November, global temperature anomalies were +1.15°F, the warmest on record (beating out 2005′s +1.12°F). Land temperatures are the warmest in the NOAA record and ocean temperatures are the 3rd warmest. Doesn’t look like there’s much cooling, does it?
Lastly, I want to make mention of a topic I wrote about recently: for all the temperature records we’re already seeing being broken in recent years, we haven’t seen anything yet. The vast majority of the heat accumulated by the globe so far as a result of global warming has been stored by the ocean, specifically the deep ocean. The heat accumulated thus far therefore has not had a chance yet to affect atmospheric temperatures. As the 21st century progresses, the heat will get that opportunity. Warm deep water will upwell along continental coastlines, shifting local climates, until enough heat is released back into the atmosphere that the global climate shifts. Unfortunately for the globe, past warming episodes have tended to occur quite quickly, on the order of tens of years. That has been a shocking discovery made recently by climate scientists. Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere will induce a higher frequency of severe weather events. It won’t take much of an increase in the number of those events to cause real problems for governments around the world. And until we get our greenhouse pollution under control, that’s the future we face: decades to centuries of a warmer climate and more extreme weather events.
