No Warming in Sacramento Either

There is no warming in Sacramento, even though CO2 has increased steadily over the decades. In fact, it is slightly cooler today than it was in 1853. Also, it is getting cooler in the recent decades, at the rate of almost 0.9 degrees per century.

As part of a series on the global warming caused by atmospheric CO2, based on the Hadley data known as CRU (Climatic Research Unit), results for Sacramento, California are shown and discussed below. Sacramento data begins in 1853, and shows almost zero warming or cooling over the entire 156 year period (see Figure 1 below). The net change is a slight cooling trend of -0.0029 deg C per year (-0.29 deg per century).

Figure 1

(click on image for a larger view in a new window)

The global warming hysteria is not supported by the data, as Sacramento clearly shows. The warmists' theory is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere, especially that portion caused by man's activities such as burning fossil fuels, creates a warmer atmosphere and hence higher temperatures. CO2 does not act alone, according to the warmists, instead it increases the amount of water vapor and that also acts as a greenhouse gas to further increase the warming. There is a multiplier effect, it appears, so that a small increase in CO2 leads to large increases in overall warming.

Yet the data for Sacramento shows slight variations when broken into shorter time frames. There is a very slight cooling from 1853 to 1910 of -0.0044 degrees C per year (-0.44 deg per century). Then, from 1910 to 1940, a noticeable increase in temperature occurred of 0.0487 deg C per year (4.87 deg C per century). This warming trend from 1910 to 1940 is shown consistently among all the California sites in the hadCRU data. Then, Sacramento experienced a very slight warming trend from 1940 to 1970 of 0.007 deg C per year (0.7 deg C per century). Then the trend reversed, so that from 1975 to 2009 the temperature decreased at -0.0087 deg C per year (declined 0.87 deg C per century).

These trends are not at all consistent with the IPCC and other warmists' theory that CO2 causes global warming. In fact, if CO2 did cause the temperature to change at all, the data for Sacramento would be impossible. The fact is that CO2 has increased steadily for decades, yet the Sacramento temperatures have been declining.

There is no warming in Sacramento. There is no cause for alarm or need for action to curb CO2 emissions, either. Yet, Sacramento politicians and the Governor (Schwarzenegger) created AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, designed to sharply cut CO2 emissions as a means to stop global warming. Sacramento politicians should walk around outside their offices a little more, and contemplate the fact that there is no warming, in fact, it is cooling in Sacramento. This is not an isolated instance, either. As previously shown on Sowell's Law Blog, it is also cooling in Eureka and San Diego.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.