Has the Global Temperature Trend Turned to Cooling?

The average for a month seems like a reasonable definition for "hottest month." Maybe you are thinking of "hottest (month) day" or "record hottest temperature for (month)."

 

I would certainly agree with that. However, that is not what I am referring to here. Please see #346, and the immediate post above it, #345. Essay posted by OP lambasts LA Times for saying March was the 17th warmest (on average) in the US record, then goes on to show data from NOAA where March ranks 21st in the US measured by highest temp recorded. I do not understand this criticism, or how OP can defend it.

NOAA themself appears to use average when describing warmest months. Ex:

https://www.noaa.gov/news/march-wrapped-up-nations-5th-warmest-10th-wettest-year-so-far

 

Post #445 stands on its own, as does the Hamlin article. I make no claim that it is consistent with anything else. Hamlin's point is straightforward.
"The Times article claim that March was the “17th warmest in the 130-year data record” is incorrect because that claim it is based on the Average versus Maximum NOAA Temperature data for the Contiguous U.S.

The Times continues to mischaracterize “average temperatures” instead of “maximum temperatures” in claiming “warmest“ and “hottest” temperature outcomes as they did regarding their flawed claim that the summer of 2023 was “The Hottest Summer Ever” as addressed here."

 

Then Hamlin's point is wrong. The LA Times very clearly state they get that "17th warmest" figure from the averages. It is the same way NOAA characterized the month in their own summary.

LA Times:

NOAA:

How is that mischaracterized?

Also:

I read this as you indicating Hamlin's method is a standard. Are standards not consistent? Where is this standard defined? Who uses it?

 

I read your post as willful misunderstanding. "Hottest" is a standard as in Good, Better and Best. If the claim is "hottest" then the appropriate measure is against other "hottest" measures.

 

Yes. They cherry-picked a data stream to conform with their preferred narrative.

 

Count this scientist as in the "cooling" camp.
“New Ice Age Has Begun,” Astrophysicist Warns…Due To Reduced Solar Activity
By P Gosselin on 23. April 2024

Due to changing solar activity, the Earth is heading into a new Little Ice Age, according to Northumbria University astrophysicist Prof. Valentina Scharkova, Newcastle, Great Britain.

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

This was reported by German online Report 24 here last week.



NASA image of a blizzard. Image soutce: NASA, public domain.

“This is due to the changing solar activity, she explains. Only uneducated people could call for a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” according to Report 24 here.

As the media is full of reports about record temperatures, the elevated readings likely have a lot to do with thermometers being placed increasingly in urban heat absorbing areas. The recent warming has very little to do with carbon dioxide.

“CO2 is not our enemy,” says Professor Scharkova, who was born and educated in Ukraine.

“We in fact have a CO2 deficiency in the world, and it is three to four times lower than the plants would like,” says Scharkova. On geological terms, over the last 140 million years, CO2 in the atmosphere is at really near record low levels.

“140 million years ago, it was estimated at 2,500 ppm, or about six times higher. And this also meant a greener and more biodiverse world, according to the professor,” writes Report 24.

“We don’t need to remove CO2 because we would actually need more of it. It’s food for plants to produce oxygen for us. The people who say CO2 is bad are obviously not very good at universities or wherever they studied. Only uneducated people can come up with such absurd talk that CO2 should be removed from the air,” Professor Sharkova tells Report 24.

Scharkova estimates the Earth’s average temperature will fall by one degree Celsius over the next 30 years and not rise. She says that the sun’s lower solar activity will lead to cooling.

Report 24 quotes Scharkova: “I only feel sympathy for the people who have invested in solar systems,” says the professor. “During the Maunder Minimum, there were years when there was no summer at all – there was a brief spring, then fall, then winter again. And if there’s snow on your solar panels or the sky is cloudy, they’re useless.”

“Whatever we do on Earth, we can’t change the orbit of the sun and the big planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus,” she explains. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Read entire article (German) at Report 24.

 

Nonsense. They literally took the paragraph directly from NOAA and rewrote it. The link to the NOAA write-up they got this from is directly in the LA Times text (link and all copied exactly from the Times into post #454). Hamlin is being dishonest or ignorant by not even mentioning the Times gets this paragraph directly from NOAA. If his problem is the methodology, he should just be blaming NOAA directly. Which calls into question why he's even using NOAA data to try and disprove NOAA's write-up.

The very obvious solution to this quandary is that NOAA always uses averages to describe the previous month (like a, umm... a standard), and the LA Times has writers that just regurgitate this information without digging further. But I'm sure this just goes to proving NOAA is also biased. Must be why their Feb write-up declared Feb to be "third-warmest February recorded". If only they had known that using averages is so biased, and instead used honest old Maximum temperatures. Then they would have more accurately declared Feb to only be the "second-warmest February recorded".



You know, when I started looking over this thread I had the most insane idea when I read the following:

I thought maybe, just maybe for once, finally I found someone on this forum interested in discussing data. Crazy thought right??

How foolish. I should know better by now.

 

Yes, and . . . ?
Hamlin's point is that the claim of "hottest" should be based on a "hottest" measurement, not an average. Both were available to NOAA and the LA Times. They chose what they chose. He objects. That's it. The important question is not what are the data, but why was that editorial choice made?
In fact, as pointed out by Hamlin, if the data presented were maximum temperatures rather than average temperatures then the narrative would have been about falling temperatures rather than rising temperatures.

 

That's the relevant point: by cherry-picking the basis of comparison, you can almost always concoct a "hottest" narrative. That's in addition to the absurd, bald lies like "hottest ever," when the most that can be claimed with any credibility or honesty is, "hottest since the coldest 500-year period in the last 10,000 years."

 

She claimed cycle 25 would be quiet, but so far it has turned out more active than most previous cycles, hence the record temperatures. Until she can make reliably accurate predictions of solar activity, I'm not signing on with her theory.

Although they are much more massive, the orbits of Uranus and Neptune have less tidal effect on the sun than Venus and earth because they are so far away.

As for what we can do about climate, our options are not limited to changing the orbits of major planets. If we really needed to, we could make substantial changes to the earth's albedo.

 

NWS seems to think otherwise.

Solar Cycle 25 is forecast to be a fairly weak cycle, the same strength as cycle 24. Solar maximum is expected in July 2025, with a peak of 115 sunspots.

Hello Solar Cycle 25 - National Weather Service

 

They did.

It was.

You didn't notice that item was datelined September 2020, nearly four years ago? The sun suddenly and unexpectedly became very active just two years ago, which, along with El Nino and the Tonga volcano, gave us our recent record-breaking temperatures.

 

My apologies for the oversight.

 

Here's more exaggerated climate flapdoodle from the LA Times.
L A Times Editorial Claim that “The planet is experiencing a horrifying streak of record-breaking heat” is Unsupported by NOAA’s Climate Data
Larry Hamlin
This L A Times hyped claim of global “horrifying streak of record-breaking heat” is falsified by NOAA’s 129+ yearlong measured climate data outcomes as measured over 9 of 16 NOAA’s…

 

And despite "polar amplification," arctic sea ice extent is somehow the same as it was 80 years ago...

 

El Nino effect still being felt.

UAH Global Temperature Update for April, 2024: +1.05 deg. C
May 2nd, 2024
The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2024 was +1.05 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up from the March, 2024 anomaly of +0.95 deg. C, and setting a new high monthly anomaly record for the 1979-2024 satellite period.


The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.15 C/decade (+0.13 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.20 C/decade over global-averaged land).