Solar Minimum 2009, Global Cooling and the Record Breaking Winter

[Cassandra Syndrome]

What is it with you and facts? The cold spell at the end of 2009 (a) only happened in certain areas, while others were anomalously warm (see map); and (b) only lasted for a while.

Here's the summer of 2009:



Really, you're sticking your fingers in your ears here, and shouting "it isn't happening!". Worse, you're making it obvious that you're doing so.

Physical memories of temperatures correlate with solar, as well as the data. But hey 2 + 2 = 5, if the party says so.

[sharper]

Here is the January temperatures for Fairbanks Alaska, which appeared red in that graph in December. While we were freezing, their temperatures were below normal as well

Fairbanks Daily Record

Firstly that's the record for January 2009, not January 2010. You could have looked or the heading or the url.

Secondly here's what your source has to say about the weather in Fairbanks for the period under discussion:

Year in Review - 2009

September brought the first frost to Fairbanks on the 23rd, extending the growing season by 15 days over the 30-year mean. October followed the same pattern of higher than normal temperatures and lower than normal precipitation. The first measurable snowfall also occurred at the end of the month, 5.3” measured at the airport. November also saw above normal average temperatures (+2.3°F), below normal precipitation (0.26”) and snowfall at just 5.4”. December again saw higher than normal temperatures (+3.1°F), which carried over into January, and was 28% below normal precipitation for the month.

[roc_]

My understanding is that before a probabilistic and exceedingly complex system like a climate system jumps to a new equilibrium it goes a little haywire and oscillates just before the jump. Sounds to me like this is what is going on. I'd also add that the critical variable is heat absorbed by the earth which is much more now there is less ice cover etc. This is evidenced by the earth's waters expanding as they get warmer, which we can see in higher sea levels etc...

[ibis]

Physical memories of temperatures correlate with solar, as well as the data. But hey 2 + 2 = 5, if the party says so.

Do you mean that you felt cold? Look, CS, the facts are there - no amount of harping on about the cold spell changes them. What you're claiming as a cold year "in line with solar activity" isn't actually a cold year at all, but a warm year with a regional cold spell at the end of it - which should make it obvious that it doesn't fit your preferred hypothesis.

5+5=3 - if we ignore the majority of the data, as you're doing.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Firstly that's the record for January 2009, not January 2010. You could have looked or the heading or the url.

Secondly here's what your source has to say about the weather in Fairbanks for the period under discussion:

Year in Review - 2009

When you enter time series history, on February 2010's data at the bottom when you click previous month it went to 2009. So you have to manually enter in the address. So here is January 2010 which has lower average temperature's than 2009

Fairbanks Daily Record

[ibis]

When you enter time series history, on February 2010's data at the bottom when you click previous month it went to 2009. So you have to manually enter in the address. So here is January 2010 which has lower average temperature's than 2009

Fairbanks Daily Record

And they're still irrelevant to what's on the map, CS, because "normal temperatures" in the series aren't the same baseline as on the map. Nor are the temperatures on the Fairbanks record average temperatures - they're min and max temperatures for each day. If it was -10 for 10 minutes in the morning, and 20 degrees the rest of the day, that will be recorded as -10 and 20, but it doesn't give you even a vague idea of the average temperature.

Once again, you're comparing apples and pigpens.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Do you mean that you felt cold? Look, CS, the facts are there - no amount of harping on about the cold spell changes them. What you're claiming as a cold year "in line with solar activity" isn't actually a cold year at all, but a warm year with a regional cold spell at the end of it - which should make it obvious that it doesn't fit your preferred hypothesis.

5+5=3 - if we ignore the majority of the data, as you're doing.

So how many heatwaves in 2009? At the start of the year there was 1 in Australia. But in the Northern Hemisphere how were the summers? Cool in Ireland. Cool in Europe, the States.

How many hurricanes? 3

Than come the Winter and we have an onslaught of record breaking snowfalls. A warm year?

[Akrasia]

It is simply unfathomable that you can be too stupid to realise the fallacy of your own argument CS, therefore, I can only conclude that you are deliberately lying.

2009 was one of the top 3% warmest years on record according to pretty much all the reputable climate bodies.

[feargach]

Now, Cassandra, think very carefully on this.

Some places on Earth got unseasonably cold around the time of these solar events. But you have also got clear proof that some other places were unseasonably warm at exactly the same time.

You are claiming that the best explanation for the places that happened to be unseasonably cold is a direct result of the solar events.

How do you explain the places that were, at exactly the same time, unseasonably warm?

You can hardly say that the warm places were caused by normal fluctuations, while the cold places were not caused by normal fluctuations, can you?

Please just focus on this problem rather than leafing through 1984 for another quote.

[ibis]

So how many heatwaves in 2009? At the start of the year there was 1 in Australia. But in the Northern Hemisphere how were the summers? Cool in Ireland. Cool in Europe, the States.

How many hurricanes? 3

Than come the Winter and we have an onslaught of record breaking snowfalls. A warm year?

Er yes. You see, if every day in a year were 1 degree hotter than the corresponding day the previous year, then the year will be, you know, 1 degree hotter on average. If it's 1.1 degree hotter for 100 days, and 5 degrees colder for 20, those balance out - you don't need a heatwave to correspond to the cold spell. If it's 1.1 degrees warmer in the Southern Hemisphere, and 1 degree cooler in the North, then it's 0.1 degree warmer globally. So you need to look at the whole surface of the Earth, over the whole year, to get a global average temperature.

Do you really not get this? You can do it pretty easily in Excel.