Record Cold Events

[osmposm]

I'm using it as a proxy for global temperatures. When the GISS "global temperature index" notes, "oh actually, not including vast areas of oceans, huge swathes of Siberia, Africa and South America, and yes, pretty much it's just Europe and US plus Japan and a rag-tag conglomeration of goodness knows what's in that data from elsewhere" then I will, likewise, qualify my own sig.

I take your point, AFT. But I'm not quite sure why the contiguous USA is a better proxy than the contiguous USA + the rest of the USA + Europe + Japan + the rag-tag conglomeration. The more, the better, surely?

[weather eater]

I thought this thread was for posting events, not arguing?

Perhaps there’s a paucity of record cold events at the moment, so its passing the time keeping the thread warm so to speak.

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

If they were done according to the same methodology, perhaps. Then again, I wouldn't include Alaska or Hawaii, and they presumably were done according to official standards. Why? Because there are going to be regional trends. Hawaii is an island in the middle of an ocean, Alaska is in the Arctic.

Failing complete global temperature coverage (such as satellites nearly achieve) it's better to pick one large region of the the globe as representative of the whole globe and see what happens there. If there is global warming, it will, by definition, affect all regions somewhat. If it doesn't, it's not global.

The United States is by far the largest of these contiguous regions we have, has been run according to a homogenous set of rules, and is geographically suited because it is on two oceans, and spans many more different climate zones, the full breadth of the temperate zone. US contiguous is the next best thing to a global temperature index, once we have accepted what is called the "global temperature index" is actually no such thing at all.

However, it must be said, as the Surfaces Stations report showed, ground temperature stations are not especially reliable even in America.

I thought this thread was for posting events, not arguing?

Sorry, I thought I was responding to questions with my point of view. This is not an argument, it's me explaining myself. Once I've done so I'm sure this tangent will be finished. I've probably said everything now. Thanks for your patience - I do hope you can understand how it is fairly relevant to the discussion, though.

Edited July 21, 2009 by AtlanticFlamethrower

[Thundery wintry showers]

As well as GISS there is also the NCDC and the HadCRU sets of global climate data. The evidence strongly suggests that while 1934 was the equal warmest year on record over the USA it was not so over the globe as a whole.

[osmposm]

If they were done according to the same methodology, perhaps. Then again, I wouldn't include Alaska or Hawaii, and they presumably were done according to official standards. Why? Because there are going to be regional trends. Hawaii is an island in the middle of an ocean, Alaska is in the Arctic.....

Well, I don't think we'll ever agree on this, but I'd have thought including as many regional trends as possible was something to be desired, not avoided.

I agree the contiguous USA is larger and more variedly representative than any other single country/landmass with good, fairly long-term records; but it covers less than 5½ % of the planet's land surface area, and is thus inevitably subject to relatively local conditions - like this current cold summer period - that may not be reflected globally.

So notwithstanding differences in methodology (and I can't see them being that significant), I'd personally prefer the net cast as wide as possible. It may not give us something that is as good as we'd like - but at least it's a bit less bad.

Ossie

[osmposm]

There are some some weird things amongst those US daily records charts. Have a look at this, a closeup of the records for the SE USA for the 18th July: http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/custom/ussoutheast.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,lowmax,highmin&s=20090718&e=20090718

In the NW corner of Florida a night-time low minimum record for the date is shown at Marianna. 68F.

Just 18 miles due west in Chipley, Florida, on the same date the night-time high minimum record of 75F was equalled!!

Heavens above, two amazing records those, aren't they? Just up the road, the same night, one the hottest 18th July night ever, one the coldest 18th July night ever, the difference less than 4C. I am beginning to realize that these local daily records mean...well...often not much, I suspect, really - whether high or low.

And that is probably why these Record Hot/Cold Events threads went dormant for so long - we'd all finally realized that highlighting or listing individual records in either direction didn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Edited July 22, 2009 by osmposm

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

As well as GISS there is also the NCDC and the HadCRU sets of global climate data.

GISS data comes from the NCDC.

The evidence strongly suggests that while 1934 was the equal warmest year on record over the USA it was not so over the globe as a whole.

I would expect that's due to regional differences. There were places in 1934 and 1998 that measured cooler than average throughout the year. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly "global" about records, at least in terms of land based temperature records.

Edited July 22, 2009 by AtlanticFlamethrower