July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded

Post by leni536 » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #130

criley2 wrote: post #119

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>To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate. In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Meteorologists lower the quality of the data they receive. People don't want bad news. People don't want to hear that it's going to rain on their weekend.…

Another big problem is that people don't understand uncertainty, and therefore forecasters don't express uncertainty. For example, just look at whatever near-term forecast you have handy. What are the forecast high and low temperatures for the next few days? What are the error bars on those highs and lows? Oh, you couldn't find error bars? Yeah.

Post by asgard1024 » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #142

sanderjd wrote: post #87

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I've always found it incredibly frustrating that both sides focus so much on "is it caused by people". It makes things personal, it sounds to many people like an accusation – " you're ruining the world just by living your life" – which (understandably!) makes people defensive, and it's completely beside the point. There are only two relevant questions: 1. Is it happening? and 2. What can we do right now to fix it? Th…

The question I would like answered is "What is the optimal mean surface temperature of the Earth?" It's hard for me to get all worked up over climate change when no one can tell me whether the observations indicate a trend towards or away from an overall improvement. It's easy to show that things are changing. It's slightly more difficult to show that such changes are resulting from human activity. But no one seems t…

Post by ori_b » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

rnovak wrote: post #41

cryptoz wrote: post #26

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There are significant temperature records that go back much farther than 1880 even. Many navies and armies kept records from all over the world, so we actually have lots more data than people think. There are also bodies of science that deal with 'aftcasting', which is making a weather forecast for a date in the past. These techniques have been refined to the point where we can make 1-day aftcasts for ~1850 that are…

To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate . In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Seriously, our forecasts are nearly always wrong. So.....saying we can make as accurate of forecasts for 200 years ago...that's not really saying much. Thi…

Post by mikeash » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

inversionOf wrote: post #146

mikeash wrote: post #140

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I don't understand what the fact that the previous record was 17 years prior has to do with my response, or your response to my response. You're right, the discussion is mostly awful. Climate change has been turned into a political issue, and awful discussion is a predictable result of that. On the other hand, I don't see how your comment improves that any.

Conflating six heads in a row with a periodic new record is unproductive. For any given area of the country we generally have several record highs per year, and record lows per year, and have every single year since 1880. That's the nature of having a very small period of records. People acting outraged about a simple statement of fact like "since 1880", or the notional, obvious statement that a sporadic high or low…

Post by bjwbell » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #105

stevewepay wrote: post #22

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How exactly do they do a fair comparison between 1880 and today? I'm assuming the temperature readings today are very accurate, but how accurate were the measuring devices going back in history, and their standards for taking temperature? Most of the thermometers I have in my house are +- 2F, which would eliminate the differences entirely.

I do not know. I am ignorant of the means in which NASA gathers temperature from the middle of the ocean and presume it is satellite. If that is the case, how was the temperature in the middle of the ocean ascertained in 1880? I would presume they base it on datapoints collected using thermometers by those at sea.