One of the most frustrating for me personally about the book is the limited options that were available for the illustrations. A full color version of the book would have been too expensive and B&W Illustrations are so limited. One solution that was given by a reader was to put the Illustrations on the website. [...]
2011 was an interesting year for the Earth’s oceans. The relative sea level (RSL) in 2011 was not only lower than 2010, it was also lower than 2009. All of the different satellite measurements agree with that, but perhaps even more interesting is that the European RSL measurement shows that the sea level in 2011 was even lower than it was back in 2005. That particular satellite shows that there has been almost no net change in the Earth’s sea level over the past 8 years.
Part 2 is going provide some seasonal and regional detail that was not covered in Part 1 in the discussion of the NH snow coverage. One of the things I am trying to show in these articles is how normal it is for certain parts of the world to experience a mild (low snow) winter while others are experiencing a harsh (more snow) winter. This year has made headlines by being unusually mild in the United States, but that is one of the only regions that is experiencing a mild winter this year, but the discussion of 2012 remains an article for the future.
The back and forth in the global warming debate about snow coverage is always amusing. The debate has stated both that snow will increase or decrease because of global warming. Both news stories get coverage almost simultaneously because every year there are some places that get more snow than average, while others get less than average. All a person needs to do is Google global warming, snow and let the conflicting stories and news articles paint the funny picture.
Over the past week I have seen news articles all over the place that 2011 was the 9th hottest year ever recorded. Not only that, but 9 of the 10 hottest years are since the year 2000. The NASA news release (GISS) is the main source for this statement, but it has been everywhere. Press releases like this are really good examples of irrelevant arguments, while being misleading at the same time.
In part 1 I focused on the temperature of the Boise area. In the year 2011 the average temperature was 0.07 °C below average, or it had a temperature anomaly of -0.07 °C. That is a meaninglessly small deviation from the average temperature. That most years are so close to average is an important clue to how stable the Earth’s climate really is. Any reader will know that I am not a fan of using temperature anomaly as a measure of climate and today I am going to demonstrate why it is a generally a worthless measure of the Earth’s climate.
I got a request from a reader to put all of the charts from the book up on the webpage. This is a really good idea and I would like to thank Lawrence for making the request. I have been spending the past couple of days thinking about the best way to do this and have decided to use the Data page of the website for this purpose. This will also allow me to link the data sources I used for their generation directly from the charts themselves. I consider it unlikely that I will be able to get it up all at once, but I will try to get a few chapters up at a time. I will have the first revision up by Monday, but it might be a work in progress for a while. I think it will be a nice feature for everyone.
Now that 2011 is over it is time to start looking closer look at the year. I am going to start off at the regional level. That is the area that I happen to live in. Most places in the world will have experienced a different year climate-wise than the one I did, but the type of analysis that I am going to provide for my region can be done by anyone with enough patience to find, collect and then analyze the data.
I am going to be the first to admit that I have been taking it easy for the past couple of weeks. By that I mean I have still been working my full-time job and trying to raise 4 children (all of them teenagers by the end of 2012). The good news is that the kids are back in school tomorrow which will help me have some more spare time for some articles that I want to write for the website. As my experience in this has increased I have found that the articles I like to write explain what is going on with the Earth and it’s climate. More and more what I write will require an understanding of the science in my book. Expect this year to have many articles that explain the Earth’s climate in context of the longer climate cycle.
Every once in a while there is a warmist story that gets more play than average. My very scientific method of determining how many people are reading such news is based on how many relatives ask if I saw it. When the long lost relatives send me an email, then I know a lot of [...]
Web Design & Dev by
