Sowell's Law Blog: Coldest April Ever in California?

UPDATE 1: April 26, 2010 - And the games begin, yet again. NOAA changed the color palette today, making the state appear much less cold. All the blue color would be purple, as shown below in Figure 2. -- Roger

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And now we can see the shape of California's temperature record for April, 2010, percalclim.dril.edu's website. I wrote on their inappropriate choices of colors for their graphicsearlier, but now they have restored the color palette that shows the alarmingly cold month we have had. It has not only been cold, with snow and rain, there is more in the forecast with only 6 more days to go in the month. The figure below shows the various temperatures, as anomalies from a long-term mean.

The climate warmists, those who fervently believe that CO2 is causing the Earth to warm catastrophically, simply cannot explain such cold temperatures. This goes completely against their deeply-held beliefs. Instead of cooling, California should be much hotter than normal. The purple areas shown in the figure should be red, or deep red. How else can AB 32 be justified, unless the prolonged and severe heat waves appear? How else can the sea levels rise, the polar ice caps melt, the polar bears die off while swimming thousands of miles in a vain search for ice to sit on?

No, this is not good news for those in the warmist camp. Stubborn Earth, it is simply refusing to cooperate with the warmists' agenda.

Figure 1 - April Anomalies to 4-22

Update 1: As shown below in Figure 2, the coldest color (hot pink) now represents 10 deg F below the average, compared to 5 degrees in Figure 1. NOAA again is playing games with the color palette, probably in an attempt to hide the decline.

Figure 2 - April Anomalies to 4-24

UPDATE 2, April 30, 2010. The figure 3 below shows the temperature anomalies for almost the entire month, from the 1st to the 29th. And, we are back to the 5 degree coldest color, and the state is clearly much colder than average as vast areas of purple and pink show. Calclim has not yet updated their monthly anomaly bar chart for April, but I will include that when it becomes available (probably on Monday May 3 or the next day). However, based on their existing chart from 1895 through 2009, this April's statewide average should be one of the 4 or 5 coldest of the entire record. Still, the climate warmists maintain that one state shows nothing, but the global average must be the concern. And, they will likely say that the global average is hotter than normal, perhaps one of the hottest on record.

Even so, it is quite amazing, this CO2. It can chill an entire state (California) while other parts of the globe are supposedly toasting. Highly selective stuff, CO2. Perhaps the CO2 in California is more of the rebel type, anti-authoritarian, rejecting any attempts at controlling its behavior.

As to the dire impacts of global warming that led to the passage of California's AB 32 (see above), none of them are or were happening in April, 2010. Except that more electricity was required to heat up houses. At least we can say that we avoided the killer heat waves. And, it is not likely that all those tropical diseases got a good start this month.

Figure 3 - April Anomalies to 4-29

UPDATE 4, May 3, 2010. The figure 4 below shows the California temperature anomalies for April, since 1895. This year's was lower than average, but did not quite reach my predicted point of top 4 or 5. It did, however, make number 12 out of 116. The average for April was 3.5 degrees F below normal (approximately 2.0 degrees C). The trend line (in black) shows a steady decline since 1990, and is more prolonged and steeper than any decline on record. (Sorry, have to do this) To NOAA's credit, at least they are not trying to hide the decline.