NZ temperatures in 2011
January 12th, 2012 at 12:00 pm by David FarrarNIWA have released:
The nation-wide average temperature for 2011 was 12.8°C, 0.3°C above the 1971–2000 annual average, using NIWA’s seven-station temperature series which begins in 1909. 2011 was the 17th warmest year since 1909, based on this 7-station series.
17th warmest. Some extremes though:
The highest recorded extreme temperature of the year (41.3°C) occurred at Timaru on 6 February (a new all-time high temperature record in the area).
Ouch. Also of interest is how each month compared to the norm for that month:
- Jan +0.3
- Feb +0.7
- Mar +0.0
- Apr -0.4
- May +2.2
- Jun +1.5
- Jul +0.1
- Aug -0.5
- Sep -0.7
- Oct +0.3
- Nov -0.2
- Dec +0.2
May was a scorcher.
The highest mean temp was 16.7 in Leigh and lowest was 7.6 at the Chateau, Mt Ruapehu.
Most rainfall was 9.49m at Cropp River and least was 0.39m at Clyde.
Nelson had the most sunshine with 2487 hours (6.8 hours a day) and Franz Josef the least at 1598 hours (4.4 hours a day).
January 12th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Yeah, been there on some of that. Some points:
1. If you pick a small enough time period (1 month) you get more variation. That’s statistics. +2.2 for May is just normal variation
2. Same effect if you pick a small area
On the actual trend, I’ve looked before at the 7 stations. One of them is in Wellington, Karori. Has a large car park right next door to the thermometer. It has a bunch of adjustments to the temperature time series, all of them went in the direction of increasing the apparent warming. No adjustment for UHI, apparently Wellington is considered not to have UHI.
I did some analysis on that, and interestingly enough windy days show less warming trend than non-windy days (i.e. windy days in 1900 v’s windy days now show less warming than still days in 1900 v’s still days now). My hypothesis is that this shows UHI as a partial cause of warming – windy days in Wgtn have less susceptability to UHI (the wind blows in new air from the sea).
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
This is a worry. I hadn’t realised how hot it was – this global warming really seems to sneak up on you.
Better start drinkies at 3.30pm.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
These numbers are as meaningful as phone numbers picked at random from the telephone directory.
Waste of taxpayers money producing them – why don’t we spend just that money on morris dancers, just as useful
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Factor in the La Nina cycle and you get a better idea of where we are.
2011 WAS THE HOTTEST YEAR ON RECORD with a La Nina weather pattern:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50c2346e-1a70-11e1-ae4e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1jCB4ZrXJ
Walk into the light.
Be alarmed.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Walk into the light.
You deerstalkers are always saying that.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:44 pm
“Normal science progresses through the collection of observations (or measurements), the conjecture of hypotheses, the making of predictions, and then through the usage of new observations, the modification of the hypotheses accordingly (either ruling them out, or improving them). In the global warming “science”, this is not the case. ”
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCC_nowarming
And especially for you Scott (like Luc Hansen you seem to have an unskeptical acceptance of anything posted on Skeptical Science): http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-cook-skeptical-science.html
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Seven stations? Really? You can get the average temperature of a chain of lumpy islands 2000 km long from just seven stations? I assume this is because there are only seven stations that have continuous readings for the last 100 years but wouldn’t it be better to use a 60 year record from 200 stations (to pull some random numbers from nowhere)?
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
That will make the incompetent Greenie Nick Smith happy and shouting to speed up the ETS implementation.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
7 stations !!? Garbage in, get garbage out.
db..
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
Scott; The financial times? – your argument was better off with wikipedia. At least those links worked.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Enjoy the warm period while you can (if indeed it is warming). Statistically over the history of the Earth the temperature has been up to 20 degrees cooler. I’d rather have 2-5 degrees of warming than cooling.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Fatnuts, sorry ’bout the link. Here’s the original source of the story from the Swiss based World Meteorological Society:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/news/archive/news_november_2011_en.html
Glad you were open minded enough to look though. Here’s an excerpt:
“Global temperatures in 2011 are currently the tenth highest on record and are higher than any previous year with a La Niña event, which has a relative cooling influence. The 13 warmest years have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997. The extent of Arctic sea ice in 2011 was the second lowest on record, and its volume was the lowest.”
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Thanks for the link RightNow.
So you think that a website that openly proclaims “our stringy universe from a conservative viewpoint” is going to produce an objective review of the facts?
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
“So you think that a website that openly proclaims “our stringy universe from a conservative viewpoint” is going to produce an objective review of the facts?”
Yes, I think Lubis Motl is trustworthy. You probably don’t, so you probably won’t read the whole list and assess for yourself, but that doesn’t affect me.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Scott, would you expect any other conclusion in a press release from an organisation created by the IPCC?
And where does it say 2011 was the hottest on record?
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 4:16 pm
The Sun just reached a peak in the last couple of years, it is all down hill by the end of this year. The funniest weather stations are the ones they put at airports, right behind were the planes warm up.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
“The extent of Arctic sea ice in 2011 was the second lowest on record, and its volume was the lowest.”
Currently Northern + Southern hemisphere sea ice extent is 181,000 sq km above the 1979-2008 mean.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
What next? The glaciers are retreating? Yes, they are. And they have been for 200+ years.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Interesting chart comparing predictions made by the alarmist’s computer models with actual measured (ocean) temperature changes.
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCC_nowarming
Basically, completely wrong.
With the emphasis on “completely.”
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 9:10 pm
I would bet these figures ignore the facts about urban warming.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Fuck me chasing bullshit links that you guys post is a waste of time
My mobile broadband is only running at dial up! And I am chasing links to bullshit like a graph with no name no citations as to were the data came from,
Who the fuck is some random blogger
grow up boys
Link to stuff that is science
Vote:wiki is far more reliable than this shit
lobbyists are not scientists they are paid to present spin not science.
January 12th, 2012 at 10:02 pm
“The 40Mb animation at the left shows the 2007 dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice throughout the year. Multiyear sea ice is older and generally thicker ice – sea ice that has survived at least one melt season (shown in brighter white)” http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ .
Shit I track down your graph and find this on the web site
Ha Ha HA HA idiots and bull shit links
who is the bright spark that posted this graph
you are
Full of shit
or an idiot
your choice
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
RightNow says:- “Currently Northern + Southern hemisphere sea ice extent is 181,000 sq km above the 1979-2008 mean.”
Okay, we’ll start with the Antarctic. The sea ice area has trended up in the last thirty years. Agreed. Strange when you consider the fact that the Southern Ocean has warmed by 0.17 deg C per decade (faster than the global average of 0.1) in that time and the air temperature has also risen 0.6 deg C.
The reason? Changing currents. (I hear you gaffaw, but let’s face it – this is one of the few ‘signs’ that appears to be going the other way)
BUT: The Antarctic land ice has been steadily decreasing:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.gif
The land ice is a far more important factor in the Southern Hemisphere, because the sea ice virtually disappears in summer, so the real indication of climate change is in the land ice volumes.
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As for the Arctic…. Well the writing’s on the wall. If you can’t read it, perhaps you need a new pair of glasses:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png
Adding the two hemispheres’ sea ice together is meaningless.
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Freezing air carries very little moisture
Vote:As the antarctic warms it has more snow further inland this increases the total ice load on land feeding the glaciers=more ice
In the arctic .There is more fresh ice in the extent of frozen ocean.Fresh ice melts quicker in the warmer air. =less ice
January 12th, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Interesting theory Griff, but NASA satellite measurements have shown a steady decrease in Antarctic land ice. Have you read this article?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 11:00 pm
A few points. +2.2C for May – whole country averaged over many stations – is the highest on record. Not “small” at all. The Wellington temperature record comment is nonsense, and the site is not in Karori. That poster has already had his thesis smashed in an extremely long thread at Hot Topic, and doesn’t need refuting again here. Some moron posting over there thought the Molesworth station mentioned at one point was Molesworth St in Wellington! He was trying to cite UHI distortion, an old canard that has been accounted for long ago. One day one of these dopes may actually come up with some brilliant new piece of science that will confounds the experts – I’m not holding my breath!
There are dozens/hundreds of present and former temperature stations in NZ, and they all show the same thing – an upwards trend.
The trouble with climate trolls of the kind posting here is that they’re not just annoying – they are simply pig-ignorant on the subject and haven’t a clue of what they’re talking about. Try a brain surgery discussion next time – your chances of saying something valid would improve!
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Scott you are correct I followed your link
It has links to/scientific papers for all the information
valid and quite interesting thanks
I guess that makes me an idiot
Vote:January 12th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
Yeah, there’s this about that Antarctic ice Scott: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-298
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 11:43 am
RWood – link to the thread here. Kindly point to the smashing.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/nz-temps-warming-real-record-robust-sceptics-wrong/
What I got was lots of wagon circling, only small amounts of real engagement, and lots of “you’re not a climate scientist so you must be wrong.” But no actual looking at the temperature record.
And you’re right, Kelburn, not Karori. My bad for loose language. Care to engage on the actual point?
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 11:52 am
PaulL…
So as their bloggers. Gareth Rowden is a taro grower (yep, a farmer) and a writer of children’s bed-time stories. He acted as if he knows shit about climate science. He is some kind of born again Rasputin of climate science.
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Thanks for the link PaulL. Little wonder RW didnt supply it. Nothing can change the facts from what he wants them to be.
Justin Maxwell had a great comment at the very end of the thread,
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I have to class myself as a skeptic. Taking data like this and trying to make it evidence of CAGW is rediculous. Most CAGW skeptics that have taken the time to look at the facts believe the following;
1. The earth is warming. Most evidence points to this. It’s part of the Earth’s natural cycle.
2. Man may be contributing to this in part, but in a minorway.
The Catasrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming debate is far from settled science.
I’m being a little over simplistic but the CAGW models do not agree with observations therefore they must be flawed. How can we possibly make decisions worth trillions of dollars that will profoundly effect every living being on the planet on flawed analysis
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
Kimble data is data, method is method
What if the data is wrong and the methods are flawed, don’t tell me this has never happened in scientific research before.
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
NZ Groover says:- “The earth is warming. Most evidence points to this. It’s part of the Earth’s natural cycle.”
Which cycle are you referring to?
>>”Man may be contributing to this in part, but in a minorway.”
Why do you think this?
Vote:January 13th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Um, then you can discredit the conclusion by pointing this out?
Vote: