Update on Everglades temperatures from Wolfram Alpha

 Original post here

With additional data from the climate station located there USC00082850   25.8489  -81.3897

That station data ends in 2017

Lake City is one of the few quality climate station in Fl USC00084731   30.1853  -82.5942

Coldest on record for Northeastern US

1989 Northeast United States

NOAA records for US Northeast Dec 1989 link no longer works

Archive org

Why did I give up on the Straighter Dope?

 Because I realized there is no reason for it.  None.  Other than the fleeting enjoyment I get out of it, it's useless.

SFX:

 Most annoying (and wrong) climate claim?

"It snows more because it's warmer"

Self assured idiot:

That's not wrong. 

SFX:

Of course it is.  It's so wrong, and so easy to prove, it's unbelievable that anyone would fall for such a blatantly false claim about something like this.

It's very annoying.

SAI:

Do you have any way of backing up your claims? 

Of course.  Except I didn't make.a claim, I noted the claim is wrong.  Even so, all the evidence, all the data supportd the well known fact that when it is warmer, THERE IS LESS SNOW, NOT MORE! 

If one now gets into an argument over this, you lose.

If you are debunking complete nonsense, there needs to be a paycheck involved.

Update on Barrow vs Chicago snow

 The original post 

Arctic climates often get surprisingly little snow. Barrow, Alaska, for example, gets less snow than Chicago in an average year, despite having winters that average 39°F (22°C) colder.  

Checked the data fo 1990-2019

Barrow still gets more snow than Chicago.

However, there is zero reason to make this public, or argue over it.  

The new way to do things

 The latest blog which is mostly data, and little commentary.

https://whyidonotbelieveyou.blogspot.com/

It's faster and much more rewarding.  I mean, if nobody is reading anything, why write anything?  

No time for non science

This blog is over, dead, finished.

The great thing about it?  Nobody cares.  Freedom is not having to worry about keeping up with a blog.

The Straighter Dope may return

The straightdope forum is a conundrum.

December 1989, coldest December ever for northeast

Read about this in an article, checked the data.

NOAA records for US Northeast Dec 1989

Archive org link if that does not work

model vs modèle

model vs modèle

Worth reading several times.

Radiant energy from the sun, what's really going on?

A WP image showing sunlight at the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA)

An image showing sunlight vs infrared from earth's surface

from a good page on these things.

The top image shows in red, the radiant energy hitting the surface.  The bottom image shows in red the infrared energy emitted by the warm surface.

In the Wikipedia image, the yellow is what does not reach the surface. (what happens to it?)


But you can see a lot of infrared does make it through the atmosphere.  (what happens to it?) Where you see yellow but no read, the atmosphere has somehow absorbed or reflected the energy, before it reaches sea level.  (what happens to it?) Note that water vapor (H2O) is the reason for most of the blocking of infrared reaching sea level.  Water vapor keeps the earth cooler, by blocking the infrared from reaching us, down here at sea level. As well as keeping us warm.

Let's look at another view of the situation. From an astronomy site (infrared is used to look at the Universe)

(as always, click to enlarge)

Most of the infrared light coming to us from the Universe is absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. Only in a few narrow wavelength ranges, can infrared light make it through (at least partially) to a ground based infrared telescope.

So there you have it, most of the infrared can't reach us from the sun.  These same windows (where infrared can freely go) let infrared in and out.  The same blocking by greenhouse gases that keeps us warmer (by stopping heat from just radiating away), also protects us from the intense heat from the sun.  The window goes both ways.  

The Straighter Dope, answering questions nobody has asked.

here is a good NASA image of the water vapor window.

Why even post about this?  Oh right, because I just read this.

What’s great about the graph is you can see clearly how the radiation from the sun can be easily discriminated from the radiation from the earth. There’s no complicated deductive work, if you measure radiation below 4μm, you know it came from the sun, no matter how many things it bounced off in the meantime. If you measure radiation above 4μm, you know it’s generated by the terrestrial system. - Science of Doom blog

Here's the graphic from the blog post.

He is saying any radiation (light energy) "above 4μm" comes from the Earth, not the sun, " If you measure radiation above 4μm, you know it’s generated by the terrestrial system", which as we see in our first graphics, is hard to believe.  We can see the sun radiates plenty of energy, and that it even reaches the surface.  

So what's going on here?  That graphics shows no sunlight "above 4μm", but we see in the other graphics plenty of radiation.

Somebody is wrong on the internet.  And I don't want it to be me.

So let's look at a few more images.  This one is concerned with what wavelengths are blocked by the atmosphere, at least at ground level.

And another one, from an imaging web page.

So the "windows" where water vapor doesn't effect infrared is easy to see, but lets look at another astronomy based image, showing the difference altitude makes. 

And a Spectroscopy of Rocks and Minerals web page. Note the calculated changes from CO2

We can see the greenhouse effect, and that it is different at altitudes, due to low or no water vapor.

One more image, from a blog that took it from another blog that no longer is to be found.

We see a different view of the solar coming in.  Recall that incoming solar looks like this, compared to outgoing earth infrared.

What is going on with these graphics?  

Water vapor in the Stratosphere

The role of WV in the SP (SkS)

GISS

SCIENCE

Scientific American

Wunderground Blog (Masters)

Why xkcd "Cold" is unscientific, as well as "wrong on the Internet" updated May 12 2022

This blog is no longer updated.  This blog covers the following post and more.

We will proceed in a scientific manner.

Is the xkcd comic true? (reproduced with permission)

Mouse over text: 'You see the same pattern all over. Take Detroit--' 'Hold on. Why do you know all these statistics offhand?' 'Oh, um, no idea. I definitely spend my evenings hanging out with friends, and not curating a REALLY NEAT database of temperature statistics. Because, pshh, who would want to do that, right? Also, snowfall records.'

It's a complicated comic, with multiple claims, and it is used to deflect commentary and concerns by people, who notice when it's really cold. So, is any of it true?

None of the black hatted characters claims are true.  And the source the comic creator used is a biased web site that publishes deceptive "science", and is also wrong on the internet.

Looking at the winter trend for Missouri shows why people complaining about the cold In Missouri (and elsewhere) are not delusional,  While temperature data doesn't show the snow and ice, that data also shows the increase in cold winters.

The Tmin (minimum daily temperature) shows it clearly, colder winters.

Comparing with the Tmax confirms it is a trend

Since trends are sensitive at times to start times, here's the 30 year trend using 2014 as the end date.  (the comic was about Jan 2014)

A 30 year trend is solid evidence for climate trends, 

You can see the areas using the GISS maps, the twent year trend for Jan-Feb makes it obvious.

The trend shows up using Jan-Mar.  

It doesn't just seem like winters are getting colder in some cities, they actually are.  It's why the xkcd comic is wrong.

That's a shame, since I really like his work.

Solar influence on climate

From here

Figure 5.14 Changes in solar constant (total solar irradiance) and global mean temperature of Earth’s surface over the past 400 years. Except for a period of enhanced volcanic activity in the early 19th century, surface temperature is well correlated with solar variability. From Lean, personal communication.

Coldest January-March in the US Northeast. Ever

OK the coldest we have official data for.  Even so, it was record cold.

Here's the straighter dope, the Tmin data

Here's the average data

Here's the 30 year trend for Tmax

and for Tmin

And here is what it looks like using GISS

Here's the twenty year trend using GISS

And here it is using the NCDC data

This is most unexpected, unless you are Judah Cohen

Toronto also had it's coldest February ever,

Fred Hoyle had a great mind

Fred Hoyle discovered how stars work by thinking about the atomic bomb.

source 1

How can we know that Hansen 2006 was completely wrong? With the facts of course.

Skeptical Science blog post from 2010, shows Hansen 2006 (now removed from the current page), showing a graph and claiming the predictions were accurate.  Note the Scenario C purple line.

Woodfortrees graph using RSS land only is matched with the 2005 level, 7.7 anomaly.

It's now 10 years later, so we can look at the next 9 years of data, and compare with the prediction.  Hansen 2006 shows over 1,0 anomaly by now.  The blue line.

Here is what actually happened.

You can see why Skepticalscience no longer show you that image, the one they used in 2010.

How the ocean tides actually work

The real reason is this. The pull of gravity drops off rapidly with distance. Lunar gravity tugs on the side of the earth facing it a lot, on the earth itself a medium amount, and on the opposite side of the earth relatively little. In short, the far-side tide is a result of the moon attracting the earth, leaving the ocean behind. 

The straight dope

December 16, 1988

That isn't actually what is happening with our oceans and the tides. If interested, see here.

Another Trenberth travesty,

Another Trenberth travesty

In all storms, the main source of precipitation is the moisture already in the atmosphere at the start of the storm. This moisture, as water vapor, is gathered by the storm winds, brought into the storm, concentrated and precipitated out. Accordingly, if there is more moisture in the environment, it rains (or snows) harder.
How does this play out when temperatures are below freezing? Temperatures in the Goldilocks range of between about 28°F and 32°F, accompanied by moisture, mean more snow: indeed, the amount of snowfall at 32°F would be at least double that at 14°F.

paper

paper

"the extra snow can easily be order 10% or more"

Scott Adams vs the SGU

Scott Adams vs the Skeptic Guide to the Universe

Scott Adams blog post with challenge to SGU and comments

SGU forum threads one and two

This one could be interesting, since I could get involved in it.  Which would ruin my chances of avoiding bias and remaining objective.

(placeholder post, much more to the story)

It's hard to understand some things

Not everything can be made simple.  Some things require a lot of study before you can even follow the conversation.