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back to article 'Polar vortex' or not, last month among the warmest Januaries recorded

It may come as a surprise to shivering citizens of the US lower 48 who are brittle from the "polar vortex" freeze-out – which is back, by the way – or soggy Brits wringing out from the recent floods, but last month was one of the warmest Januaries on record when measured globally. How warm? It depends upon whose analysis you …

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    1. Glyph
      Reply Icon

      Re: Thank you for a balanced article.

      If you attack science *with* science, that is the epitomy of science. The 36 billion tons of co2 for instance. I am not a non-warmist, I probably am a non-statist, but I have heard the argument that human produced carbon is such a small percentage of the total carbon produced, that the ecosystem will adapt and be able to sink more carbon over time. There is some evidence of this, initially estimates showed that approximately 40% of the co2 we produce was getting absorbed, and the rest was accumulating in the atmosphere. Recent estimates have been a little higher than 40%. The non-warmists would claim that this is the adaptation of the planet, and soon it wil be 100%. The warmists would ask how many species will go extinct, and what sort of climate will we have, at this new equilibrium point, if there is one. I am neither though, as a non-statist I will simply say that our governments will be unable to change anything even with the full will of the people behind them, so we need a technical solution, not a policy one. One example I like is a company that installs solar panels for free in places where it makes sense and takes a large portion of the energy savings as payment for some period thereafter. An energy plant with lower cost per watt than coal, and an electric car with lower total cost of ownership than a petrol car are very difficult challenges, but I think meeting those challenges are what will save us, not some artificial policy that will be sidestepped before its finished draft arrives.

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  2. Mikel

    So

    It has cooled from the peak then?

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  3. Bob 5

    Are we tilting at windmills....

    here...?

    Let's look at a couple of indisputable facts:

    1) The Global Mean Surface temperature has increased by about 0.8°C since the beginning of the 20th. century. (NASA GISS data).

    2) The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased to approximately 400 parts per million, (or to put it another way, 0.04%). This level of CO2 is c. 24 times less than the noble gas argon in the atmosphere.

    As I understand it the problem with current climate theory is that there is no reliable science that links 0.04% of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere to a significant affect on radiative forcing. (This could explain the failure of the infamous 'hockey stick' projection).

    Is human activity still responsible for that increase of the above mentioned 0.8°C in the global mean surface temperature? Possibly, but perhaps the situation may not be as simplistic as a simple link between CO2 levels affecting radiative forcing which seems to get all of the world's attention at great cost.

    Consider for instance that every single fossil fuelled family sized automobile travelling down the motorway/freeway/autobahn at say 75mph has to dissipate c. 15Kw* (15x 1Kw, 1-bar electric fires...), worth of waste energy due to the inefficiencies of the internal combustion engine without even considering trucks, coaches, trains, planes etc. This could go a long way to explain the c. 2°C temperature difference between urban and rural areas. This is just one small example of the possible influence of Direct Energy Wastage on climate change. (There is a better correlation between the rise of the automobile than the industrial revolution on the increase in global mean surface temperature).

    In the end, of course, everything comes down to population growth, (7 billion and counting towards doom), and the associated demands for food, goods, services, mobility and energy usage.

    *Say 30bhp to maintain 75 mph @ 30% engine efficiency = (0.746x30)Kw = c.22Kwx70%=15Kw wasted power dissipated to atmosphere as thermal energy.

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    1. strum
      Reply Icon

      Re: Are we tilting at windmills....

      >This could explain the failure of the infamous 'hockey stick' projection

      Who told you it had failed? It's pretty solid, still. It's just the denialists who kept repeating 'it failed, it failed' on every possible occasion.

      The production of mechanical heat - whether efficiently or not - is infinitesmally small, in the context of the planet's heat budget.

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    2. Rob Isrob
      Reply Icon

      Re: Are we tilting at windmills....

      "This could go a long way to explain the c. 2°C temperature difference between urban and rural areas." That and two other factors. Cities are concrete and asphalt heat islands , secondly temperature recordng stations are often very poorly placed. On roofs or too close to heat sources like parking lots.

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  4. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    In the US,,,

    ... the US remains a big place, with a lot of variation in weather and short-term climactic effects.

    During the month, says NOAA, England received rainfall 91 per cent above average, and Western Australia's precipitation was about twice normal. In the US, the tables were reversed.

    In mid-Michigan, which - and I know this is a tough concept for many people on the coasts - is part of the US, precipitation for calendar year 2014 is up about 21% over the average since regular measurement started. That's not out of the ordinary, but it's also not "reversed" from the (obviously greater) excessive rainfall in England and Western Australia. Atlanta and Boston both up about 23% from normal. In all three cases, that's less than they were over-average for last year.

    And - astonishingly - Hawaii and Alaska often have weather that doesn't correspond closely to what's happening in the Contiguous 48.

    In short: it's not useful to talk about rainfall patterns and drought for "the US", unless you're going to say something like "x% of the contiguous US is in severe drought". And even that's not very useful.

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