Are record cold temperatures possible in a warming world?

How little deniers even understand of the basic is demonstrated by Nightwind "We can't trust weather stations like East Anglia whom were caught up in the ClimateGate scandal"

a: Climategate was cleared up by an inquiry

b: UEA is a research division of the Met, UEA don't operate the weather stations they simply process the data

On a local personal note he also makes mention of snow in Australia, as if this is proof of some thing, newsflash dude, snow in the South east of Australia happens of a semi regular basis commercial ski fields have operate at Mount Hotham and Buller (look them up) http://www.mthotham.com.au/ and have for decades. Of course nightwind also runs with the standard denier catch cry, you can't trust the temperature record which is based on the supposed work of Anthony Watts but this work has been pick to pieces over the last few years, yes some stations are badly located but it is a few of the total, and deniers don't seem to worry that this supposed research is only presented in web page, why not published, the denier answer would be, you also can't trust peer review when in reality there is no publishable research, I know from personal and direct examples what watts is actually like, this is one of the sites in his surfacestations list

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_ite...

Several years ago I happened on this page and noticed another picture here which showed the inside of the Stephenson screen, it clearly showed a box full of junk and no instruments, there was a roll of chart paper, that at a quick glance might fool someone who didn't know what they were looking at, but clearly not a working instrument, I (then more naive about denier motives) emailed watts and pointed this out expecting that as a so called champion of the truth he would remove or recheck this site, no, he simple removed that one photo, and the Tahoe City site remains to this day as part of his list of sites, this is the man deniers put so much faith in.

Secondly: were I live (Hobart, Tasmania) was graced by a visit by Mr Watts earlier this year, while here spreading his BS he visited the local Met office and did a supposed check of the local temperature station and talked to the lead forecaster 'Malcolm' (who I actually know as he was the ship weather forecaster on a trip I took to Antarctica back in 2003)

Watts review of the site is here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/22/tasmanias-de...

Oh No, it seems it's yet another bad site (if you want to believe watts), now for some local knowledge

a: the air conditioners - wonder why watts only showed the distances to the fences and not the aircon, because if he had you would have seen 24.6m a distance more than far enough to make the effects nonexistent. Then there are the fences the closest is just over 7m a little inside the recommend 10m for a 'good' quality site except again, watts fails to account for local conditions, a fence can be a problem due to radiant heat but this fence is to the North in this particular site even at the height of summer the sun is over head it's not an issue in June (when watts took the photo) it is certainly not an issue as the Sun is towards the Northern horizon (we are at 42deg south) which also pretty well explains the long shadow, you only get that in the depths of winter. In fact Malcolm tells me that watts hung around for some time to get those photos as in June sunset here is ~4:30pm.

These are just two sites, but based watts attitude for these what does it say for the accuracy, reliability or honesty of his other sites.

But back to the actual question - yes deniers are making much of the current snow falls in Europe and the U.S. yet while they are happy to play up these regional events they are also ignoring other regional events the decline of the arctic ice continues (in Winter) http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_im... which is short term but also declining in longer term

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101206_...

They also have made mention of snow in Australia, they fail to mention it was in alpine regions and described by the media here as a light dusting, of little benefit to those in Perth who hit 40c (that's 104F not 80 for Mike L's info) last weekend or those in Adelaide http://www.bom.gov.au/ who are expected to do the same today, two cities as far apart as LA and Dallas.

But enough of regional events what is the globe doing, according to NOAA the year to date Jan-Nov is the warmest on record, that seems pretty straightforward.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

Global climate is indeed made up of the combined total effects of all the regional events but you can't as deniers seem to be trying to do just use some and ignore others.

First, make a decision if you want to believe "blogo-science" like Trevor saying "The amount of warming we’ve witnessed as a consequence of human activities is a little under 1°C. When put into context this doesn’t have a huge impact on the actual temperatures." compared to the scientists that study the earth and its climate. They are all worried stiff, because the amount of CO2 we are releasing is accelerating. And a few degrees on average makes a big difference- just like a few % makes a difference to your bank account or superannuation fund.

All of the weather factors mentioned by Trevor are- in the opinions of expert scientists not an anonymous blogger- caused by global warming, and have been predicted for ages.

Also, some of the pollution we create is cooling the planet, and saving us from all the effects of CO2 based warming. So, CO2 is pushing up warming, dust and gunk in the air is pushing it down a bit. Doesn't mean the CO2 is not causing warming!

Some of the feedback mechanisms are "positive feedback"- sort of like a bushfire, heat causes a small fire, then that fire causes more heat which makes the fire bigger. There are some of these climate change feedbacks which could cut in and make things a lot lot worse than the 2-4 degrees C rise currently expected (e.g. Arctic ice never recovers, exposed water absorbs more heat, so less ice next year).

Anyway, the whole thing about global wwarming is that it is *global*. Some parts of the globe will still experience cold snaps, while other parts are hotter. The cold snap this winter is because the Arctic winds which normally keep the Arctic's "fridge door" closed and cold air trapped over the north pole have shut down. So the fridge door is open, the fridge is hotter (many areas close to the N pole are 20C warmer than average), while in front of the fridge door it is cooler. On average it is warmer, and 2010 is going to be the 1st or 2nd warmest year on record. The cold snaps are predicted as the amount of ice decreases in the Arctic.

The attached link to satellite map of temperatures shows that while there are small areas of colder weather (in an area that is highly populated, so gets disrupted a lot, and reported about a lot), that huge areas have also been a lot warmer at the same time (low population areas, so don't make the news as much, not a lot of airports and travelers in Alaska compared to London!).

In summary, if you understand what an "average" is, you can understand that it can be colder somewhere, while it is hotter elsewhere, and the average moves up. And it is just continuing to move up, year after year!

Yes, clearly they are. Record high and low temperatures can be thought of as large deviations from the mean temperature at a particular location on a particular date, and the longer the record the larger the deviation has to be to set a new record temperature. If the mean temperature would not be going up then the odds would be even that a new record high or a new record low would be set. If a station is brand new then the first year every date would have new records every day, the next year the odds would be about 50/50 for setting a new record, and so on. If the station is 100 years old and there has been no change in the mean temperature of the site, then the odds of setting a new maximum or minimum temperature on that day would be roughly 1 in a 100. However, let's say that the mean has gone up at that station by a few degrees, now to set a new record high temperature requires a smaller deviation than if the mean had not gone up, and a larger deviation from the mean is needed to set a new record low temperature. It might change the odds of setting a new high to 1 in 70 and the odds of setting a new low to 1 in a 140. Consequently there will be many more new highs set than new lows--but there will still be new record lows set, but not as often.

This is exactly what records indicate, that we are seeing many more record highs than record lows every year.

I should mention that this can also be brought about by heat island effects, so it's not necessarily a "smoking gun" for global warming.

Record cold temperatures are always possible.

Ask yourself why talking about it is a problem. It is a major concern for public safety and agriculture. It needs to be addressed, and saying it will all be ok after carbon trading for 100 years does not make a lot of people feel better.

The amount of warming we’ve witnessed as a consequence of human activities is a little under 1°C. When put into context this doesn’t have a huge impact on the actual temperatures. For example, if it’s 25°C then it would have been 24°C had there been no manmade warming, and similarly, if it’s –25°C then it would have been –26°C were it not for the human warming component.

In respect of setting new record high temperatures, the warming now makes this more likely than it was in the past. Similarly, the odds of recording new record lows have been reduced. It certainly doesn’t mean there will be no new record low temps; neither does it mean that all the previous record highs will be broken.

Historically there was a balance between setting record highs and setting record lows. The balance has been disrupted of late such that there is now a 6 to 1 chance that any new temperature record will be a high. Since 2002 there have been 941 record high temps broken and 149 record cold temps http://www.mherrera.org/records.htm and in 2010 there have been 349 record highs and 17 record lows http://www.mherrera.org/temp.htm

The weather in the UK during these past few weeks has been exceptionally cold and this has been a consequence of cold air feeding in from the Arctic. November was the coldest since 1993 and December will be the coldest since 1890. Overall the year has been the coldest since 1996, it’s the 66th coldest in the last 100 years and the 111th coldest in the last 250 years. December was an exceptional month with the temperature being some 5.3°C colder than average.

The latest NASA plot shows that whilst cold temps were being felt in the UK, Scandinavia, parts of Canada, the US and Australia, most of the rest of the world was considerably warmer than normal with many countries in Africa and Asia seeing temperatures considerably above normal http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap....

You asked if the weather is unusual. Throughout much of 2010 global weather patterns have been in a state of chaos and there have been several factors that have contributed to this…

• Unusual pressure systems over the North Atlantic early in the year

• A complete reversal of Arctic weather movements, ice-flows and ocean currents

• The stalling of the polar jet stream caused by opposing Rossby Waves

• El Nino conditions in the southern Pacific earlier in the year

• A rapid transition to La Nina conditions later in the year

• Global warming

• Blocking systems over Eurasia

• The failure of the annual Monsoon Cell to move northwards

• Unusually warm conditions in the Indian Ocean

• The failure of the Jet Stream to migrate across the Himalayan Plateau

• Exceptionally mild air masses over much of the Arctic

Any one of these events has the potential to affect weather on a global scale, when all of them happen in such a short space of time we end up with a year of extreme and unusual weather.

Conditions are still disrupted and this has played a significant role in the unusual levels of rain and snow that have affected many countries in the last few weeks. It’s impossible to say when things will return to normal – it could be a week or it could be a year, and for as long as there’s this level of disruption there will continue to be unusual weather events.

Yes, of course record cold temps are possible in a warming world, they are just likely to become less common, a pattern that is holding (in the US, for instances, during the last decade, there have been more than twice as many record highs as lows).

As for the cold weather in northern Europe during early and mid-December, this may actually be a result of declining sea ice in the Arctic (i.e. a knock-on effect of warming elsewhere) affecting wind patterns. Plenty of links to scientific papers on this topic at the link below.

All these storms we've been getting is a symptom of global warming.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/29/noaa-2010-ho...

You have to be smarter than scientists seem to be to get a real answer.

If someone is whining about all the snow in NYCity and that's the only real story, then it is considered "weather" and no determining factor regarding climate change. OH, but when NYCity has "THE HOTEST DAY" since.....who know's what year........all of a sudden the climate change moron's come crawling out of the wood work. This again is just "weather".

For a more complete answer one needs to look world wide..... which is hard for someone who has a live and not alot of time to waste on the internet and other places chasing down the truth......since we are working our 40 hours a week plus.

But just last year we saw not only record low temps in Chicago. We saw the whole eastern sea board with record lows, we saw snow in Copenhaugen in December which is like 10 times in the past 100 years. We also saw snow in Austrailia and Las Vegas. Is it just coincidence that so many record lows and snow sightings were happening all over the world and it can just be "weather" ?

Highly doubtful. You never hear of record highs in that many places scattered all over the globe. At best you will see a region mostly covered, but no where else.

We can't trust weather stations to tell us what's going on, because alot of the places that "Global Warming" scientists are whining about don't have temperature stations to rebut thier "assumptions" or "estimations".

We can't trust the stations that do exist because the standards have been violated. They've been painted with different paint that attributes 1/2 a degree more to temp readings, or located near black top parking lots or exhaust vents when they should be 100 feet away from anything.

We can't trust weather stations like East Anglia whom were caught up in the ClimateGate scandal, and had some brave soul not hacked thier database, we would never had known.

We can't trust politicians, like Al Gore, they lie to feather their own nests and keep power.

We can't trust the liberal journalists hype since they have a political agenda.

We can't even trust the UN as the IPCC has been busted on thier 2007 report for many inaccuracies and flat out lies.

In the end, as in all things, we have to be diligent to view the world as a whole, we have to collect data and hold the liars, thieves and back stabbing politicians accountable for trying to ruin our lives. They live high on the hog through our tax money as they're little kingdoms are supported on the back of the people.

Even the so called "green house effect" would through common sense tell you that we should have been constantly be warming for the past 15 years because CO2 production hasn't been reduced, yet we've had no such warming for 15 years, and even those claiming we have can only point to 1/2 a degree here or there............which is accountable in the removal of temperature stations and the changing of those existing.

At best, GW is a hoax build on sloppy science. In the 70's we had old coal plants releasing Sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. It created Acid Rain which caused much destruction to the enviroment.

Simple cause and effect. So where are these so called clear signs today ?.........there are none.

So to turn people's lives upside down because a group of bleeding heart liberals with bad science should not only be criminal, but prosecutable.

Global warming causes weather extremes. It is not just about the temp in a location.

I think it cancels out the Average If its 80 degrees in Australia and - 10 in Alaska

The average would be lower . And if you add -85 for Siberia . Throws the whole thing off.