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,