NEW NORMAL: In the past decade, January average minimum temperatures rose nationally by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with most of the nation warming except for a cooling in Florida and nearby areas.
Image: Map courtesy ncdc.noaa.gov
As the new decade opens up, researchers are gathering data that will redefine weather pattern averages for the nation.
The "new normals" will update the averages for temperatures, rainfall and snow. A climate normal bases itself on the weather patterns of a particular region over a 30-year period. Every decade, in accordance with international agreements, the National Climate Data Center releases new temperature and rain and snowfall normals for 10,000 regions across the country.
This may sound like an academic or a laboratory exercise, but for some businessmen, utility regulators, wildlife agencies and others, tinkering with the meaning of "normal" can mean big changes. They range from future sales and budgetary issues to difficulties with songbirds and trout.
The current normals rely on weather patterns that occurred between 1971 and 2000. The new normals, which will be released later in the year, will drop the 1970s -- a decade marked by cool temperatures -- and add the hottest recorded decade in history, the 2000s.
"There's pretty big differences between those decades," said Anthony Arguez, NCDC's climate normals project manager. "Average temperatures are going to be a little higher in most regions."
Perhaps most significantly, winter averages in the upper Midwest will be warmer. Arguez anticipates a 1- to 2.5-degree-Fahrenheit change for upper Midwest temperatures in January. Preliminary data comparing minimum January temperatures and maximum July temperatures between the 1970s and the past decade also show warmer summers for the western third of the country. The southern central section of the country, including Missouri and Oklahoma, showed an overall summer cooling of about half a degree, but Arguez played down its significance.
Rain and snowfall averages are also expected to change along with the temperatures, but it's too early to tell by how much. Arguez noted a general drying in the West, but he said he wasn't sure of the scale. He doesn't expect precipitation to change as much as the temperature.
With these changes comes a pronounced effect on the industries and organizations that rely on the normals.
Industries anticipate the changes
Aside from the daily weatherman, farmers and travel agents are among many who rely on climate normals. Knowing the climate average can help determine the productivity of a crop or where the best weather for a beach vacation will be.
Power companies rely heavily on the normals. Some states use the normals to regulate gas and electric companies, but many utilities base rates on the 1971-2000 normals regardless. In recent years, the normals' inability to keep up with a warmer climate hurt some of the power companies. In that sense, many will be relieved when the new ones kick in.
"Utilities have been waiting for the 1970s to leave," Arguez said.
But some couldn't wait long and started calculating their own normals instead.
One example is Consumers Energy, which provides gas and electric power to the majority of Michigan. For a long time, the utility used the 30-year normals to forecast its sales in the year ahead. The problem was that the earlier years had much cooler averages than the more recent years. Warmer temperatures brought in less revenue than expected.
Simply put, the sales forecasts didn't match the weather.
"If you use the older normals that have a lot of cold weather, it forces your sales impacts to be higher," said Linda Clark, a gas sales forecaster for Consumers Energy.
Consumers Energy now relies on a 15-year normal, which just averages NCDC data from the most recent years. Clark says switching to the 15-year normal made her forecasts better, although they haven't been exempted from the harsh economy. At the end of each year, she compares the previous year's actual sales to her initial forecasts using both the 15- and 30-year normals. Three-fourths of the time, the 15-year normal is more reliable, she said.
But with shortened normals comes a risk of underplaying recorded changes to the climate. Even the updated 30-year normals will mask some of the temperature changes of recent history.
"When people switch over to the 1981-2010 standards, the effects on climate change aren't going to be as pronounced," Arguez said.
Other utilities adapted alternative normals years ago. Xcel Energy, which provides power in eight different states, including Minnesota, Colorado and the Dakotas, started using 20-year normals nearly 20 years ago. They're updated at the beginning of each year to add the previous year's temperatures to the averages.
Alternative normals
Utilities aren't the only organizations turning to other studies to make sense of what's to come. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency recently released a climate change report that projects a mean temperature increase of 5 degrees in the state over the next 50 years.
The agency's report aimed to spell out the impact a warmer climate will have on Tennessee's species and their habitats. It found that a warmer climate could affect the paths of its migratory songbirds and threaten extinction on its only native trout.
For its part, NCDC is looking into alternate ways to determine new types of normals to compare the 30-year averages with. Since a lot of organizations use the normals to plan for the future, one way could involve updating the normals every year instead of every decade.
Another would focus on significant climate trends to help figure out a shorter period of time to base the normals on. A third is to develop a "hinge" that would place the normals on a linear trend past 1975, which Arguez said was the year the temperatures started rising. In that case, normals would be up when temperatures warm and down when temperatures cool.
These, and seven or eight other potential alternatives, all hinge on whether NCDC gets a grant it recently applied for. If that happens, the earliest they will be available is 2013.
The new normals are set to be released in phases, with the first set for June and the second by the year's end.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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16 Comments
Add CommentWhy don't they use a set of moving averages to follow the trends?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"However, the fact is that CO2 has no effect on weather"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see. Because "R.Blakely said so" outweighs many decades of scientific study and thousands of scientific conclusions.
Your logic is seriously flawed and your "facts" are less than adequate.
@Candide,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisR. Blakely, has been spamming Scientific American with this comment repeatedly to spite being repeatedly debunked by showing him the databases for CO2 absorption, pointing out that unlike CO2 water vapor is incredible sensitive to temperature changes and water vapor is not evenly distributed in the atmosphere, etc, etc.
He seems to think that if he repeats a lie long enough that it will become the truth. I am beginning to think he is mad as hatter.
In a climate on a well documented rising curve, using 30 year retrospective averages is no longer sensible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this situation, using a set of sliding 30 year averages makes much more sense.
That would give us three sets of numbers:
A. Retrospective 30 year averages.
B. Averages calculated from the last 15 years together with best estimates of the next 15 years.
C. Averages calculated from best estimates of the next 30 years.
This would allow better public policy to be set. For instance, in California, it could be used to guide where home construction would be allowed in flood plains and also guide construction of levees to meet future needs.
Trent, perhaps you can help me out. I have below what I deem to be a credible criticism of forecasting using general circulation models (GCM's).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have never denied that the planet's temperature has trended up (and down) over the past ten decades. I simply believe these changes are due to natural variability and cannot with any certainty be attributable to an introduction of C02 that amounts to less than 1% of all greenhouse gases extant in the atmosphere. Show me where this guy make his mistake:
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html
Thanks in advance for your opinion.
Cordially, etc...
Timbo,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe vast majority of the sun's energy comes in on one range of wavelengths, let's call this shortwave, the vast majority of the energy emitted by the earth is emitted within an entirely distinct set of wavelengths, let's call these longwave. See Planck's Law. Most of the atmosphere does not interact with the energy the earth emits; CO2 does. Your argument based on the low ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere misses this fact of the physical world entirely.
There is overlap between the frequencies absorbed by H2O and CO2; this is well known by everyone with even an introductory knowledge of the relevant science, which includes every scientist studying climate. This does make it difficult to pinpoint an exact figure for the contribution of CO2 relative to H2O, but you have to account for the fact that there is very little water vapor at the mean emission altitude and above; the ppm of water vapor declines rapidly with altitude, where CO2 is relatively well mixed.
"this guy", whoever/whatever. The best estimates of the GHG warming contributed by CO2 is in the neighborhood of 20%. "this guy" isn't even close. His argument is basically of the "it's too hard" variety. It is hard, but that doesn't mean we can know nothing. He mixes this with the fallacy that a belief that more CO2 will cause a warming is based on computer models. Not true, it is based on the physical properties of CO2 which can be readily measured in any well-equipped physics lab.
The understanding that CO2 is responsible for current warming is not based on climate models, as "this guy" states; it is based first on the physical properties or EM absorption/emission that are very well known, and, btw, incorporated into the models.
More relevant to the topic: In my lifetime, things have changed in MN from when you could expect snow in November not to melt entirely until April or May. Now a white Christmas is considered a treat.
"But maybe things aren’t so cut-and-dried. In 2001, a paper published in the journal Climate Research13 candidly discussed uncertainties in the physics that informs the GCMs. This paper was very controversial and incited a debate.14 But for all that was controverted, the basic physical uncertainties were not disputed. It turns out that uncertainties in the energetic responses of Earth climate systems are more than 10 times larger than the entire energetic effect of increased CO2.15 If the uncertainty is larger than the effect, the effect itself becomes moot. If the effect itself is debatable, then what is the IPCC talking about? And from where comes the certainty of a large CO2 impact on climate?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes Trent, no question about predicting "climate in a Klein bottle", but what I was wondering about was the "uncertainties in the energetic responses to earths's climate systems" as noted above.
Read this paragraph and explain where he's wrong about GCM's in general:
Direct tests of climate models tell the same tale. In 2002, Matthew Collins of the UK Hadley Centre used the HadCM3 GCM to generate an artificial climate, and then tested how the HadCM3 fared predicting the very same climate it had generated.28 It fared poorly, even though it was the perfect model. The problem was that tiny uncertainties in the inputs — the starting conditions — rapidly expanded and quickly drove the GCM into incoherence. Even with a perfect model, Collins reported that, “[I]t appears that annual mean global mean temperatures are potentially predictable 1 year in advance and that longer time averages are also marginally predictable 5 and 10 years in advance.” So with a perfect climate model and near-perfect inputs one might someday “potentially [predict]” and “marginally [predict],” but can not yet actually predict 1 year ahead. But with imperfect models, the IPCC predicts 100 years ahead.
"the planet's temperature has trended up (and down) over the past ten decades."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFact. It has been doing this for even longer.
So how is our addition helping? Its not natural...so you cant look back and compare to what was only natural.
c02 has been higher sure.. What happens when its time for it to get higher again, naturally. On top of what we have done.
We don't know enough, pretending is only pretending.
Lack of undeniable facts should not be a reason to do nothing. Intentional or not that's what is happening.
Isn't there more to worry about than just c02 anyway?
Climate is a complicated matter all on its own, the only thing we have to compare Our time to is the complicated matter on its own.
i want to hear the argument for No preparation, No understanding.
better safe than sorry.
preparation. Need i say more?
Does it matter if the models are imprecise for short-term prediction? I think it would be more important for the models to have some acceptable level of statistical accuracy for prediction of long-term trends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEASTWOOD DC : The reason climate models are imprecise is because of sparse density of sampling. Secondly we are measuring temperature and not energy. Take the case of water : Ice temperature continues to rise until it reaches 0°C, when it absorbs massive quantities of latent heat before thawing. The 'triple point of water' means water temperature averages are not directly correlatable with satellite infrared photos for example, and we have few measures of sublimation. But for the moment averages are all we have to work on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should realize that "climate shifts" are not due to CO2. CO2 reduces extremes in climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, we should not forget that photons in sunlight at 15-microns are blocked by CO2, thus cooling the Earth's surface in the daytime, and warming the surface at night.
Second, the "principal absorption band (13 to 17 microns) of the carbon dioxide spectrum" is centered on 15-microns. Since the band is very narrow, CO2 absorbs all 15-micron photons already, and so more CO2 cannot block more photons. CO2 emits far fewer 15-micron photons (due to the fourth power of its temperature, which limits re-emission).
Third, water vapor controls atmospheric temperature because gases like CO2 do not radiate many photons, but water vapor absorbs many types and radiates more types of photons than CO2.
Eco-Steve: That's not the issue ... well, it IS part of the issue, but it's not what I mean. There is a lot of power in averages, and a statistical approach to modelling might lead to a better understanding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not always necessary, and perhaps not even helpful, to model short term variation when the goal is long term prediction. It DOES help remove known sources of variability, at least for short-term. If these short-term factors are highly unpredictable, then there may be little predictive power when these estimates are extended to the long-term (no more than random noise). A simpler model than relies on averages it not necessarily an inferior model.
Since the infrared radiation absorption by CO2 can be easily measured in lab experiments and the physics equations governing this phenomenon are well known, why can't the sophisticated climate models accurately 'predict' the known past climate data?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn educated guess - because you can't simulate the climate in the lab. There are no feedbacks in the lab. The climate is dominated by feedbacks which have far greater effect than the intial no feedback effect of CO2. Moreover, the feedbacks can be positive or negative and they are chaotic and cannot be accurately described by deterministic physics equations.
IMO the failure of models to predict is not bec. the models are crude but bec. they are trying to predict a physically chaotic climate system, which is unpredictable in the long term.
A model can predict anything a computer programmer desires. The problem is what is put into the computer. For example, CO2 absorbs sunlight at 1.5-microns, and so temperature is reduced in the daytime. CO2 absorbs 15-micron photons at night, and so temperature is maintained at night. A programmer should include these two facts to get a model of how CO2 REDUCES climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate shifts are reduced by CO2 emissions. The fact that CO2 absorbs photons from sunlight is being ignored by scaremongers.
What has a new decade got to do with it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCouldn't they have collected some data LAST DECADE?
Oh, I see, they put it with all that missing weather station data. Maybe we can get a hockey-stick out of it.
Probably.
Most of the radiant energy from the sun is in the visible light form. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation mostly from the earth's surface. As a result, the infrared photons stay longer in the atmosphere before escaping into space. When absorbed, these photons convert into heat (increased molecular kinetic energy). This tends to increase the total heat content and temp. of the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn principle, this atmospheric greenhouse effect is well understood that is why believers say the science is settled. But the chaotic positive and negative feedbacks can throw a monkey wrench to this neat cause and effect relationship between CO2 and temp. making it uncertain.