Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The New Normal

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by

Dick Hall-Sizemore
in

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

We are used to hearing and seeing weather temperatures reported as being some number of degrees above or below normal. The definition of “normal” has changed this year.

The National Weather Service defines “normal” climate conditions as a 30-year average. New Climate Normals are calculated every 10 years. Before this year, the 30-year time frame was 1981-2010. Now, the “normal” time frame is 1991-2020. As a result, “normal” temperatures have shifted upwards.

Because we are in an era in which climate conditions are shifting, the National Weather Service is adjusting its reporting by providing alternative definitions of “normal.” In response to user groups, it is releasing monthly “Supplemental Temperature Normals.” These reports show averages over 5-, 10-,15-, and 20-year periods, in addition to the traditional 30-year normal. They also show “normal” calculated differently from a straight average. These alternative methods are called “Optional Climate Normal” and the “Hinge Fit.”

Therefore, when it gets hot in the coming months and some folks on this blog, who are not overly concerned about climate change, say that temperatures are not that different from the norm, just remember that normal ain’t what it used to be.

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44 responses to “The New Normal”

  1. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    Thanks, Dick, for a reminder that whatever you do or don’t think are the reasons for it, in fact, sea levels in Tidewater Virginia are rising and the flora and fauna in our Tidewater Virginia fields and gardens are telling us conditions are closer to USDA Zone 8 than Zone 7 these days.

    NOAA’s departments all report past, current and forecast conditions relative to a “normal” determined from historical records for every location and date where data is collected. It follows that NOAA would be remiss if it didn’t reassess “normal” whenever its own record-keeping documents a persistent abnormality.

    We can argue over NOAA’s criteria for “normal” and when does a persistent abnormal invite or require it to reassess “normal” — but there is no doubt that for at least the past 40 years the average annual temperature has been persistently abnormally high and the trend is toward higher still. At some point we have to acknowledge the obvious.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      My wife’s grown-from-seed lemon tree is doing quite well for its 3rd year. Of course, it receives far more attention in its 3 years than I ever saw in 30.

      It is not the only citrus growing in Virginia either. There is a large “bramble” on the Yorktown Battlefield growing that produces some kind of small round, very sour, fruit. It is located approximately here 37°13’21″N 76°30’06″W · 62.7 ft

      1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
        Eric the half a troll

        That bramble orange is probably Trifoliate Orange. Hardy to zone 6 and has been in the area for sometime. Fruit is completely useless but it does make good rootstock for grafting.

        1. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Eureka! I had thought it a bizarre lemon because of being out-of-zone.

          Nevertheless, two mild winters has allowed the spousal unit’s tree to reach 3 feet with a trunk at the base the size of my thumb.

          The real (personal) test of climate change is coming soon. Our 20-year old Norfolk Pine is now 7.5′ tall. I’ve been mulling the choice of a spot in the backyard, or transporting him to SC and leaving him at the SC-Ga welcome center in the dead of night.

    2. vicnicholls Avatar
      vicnicholls

      ? Our gardening zones here in Chesapeake have been listed as 8A for years.

    3. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      “Persistently abnormally high?” Unlike some of these others, you will recognize actual data, this gathered by a government that right now has bought into the climate change catastrophe meme:

      https://wattsupwiththat.com/global-temperature/

      Tens of one single degree change. Tens of one degree.

    4. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      “Persistently abnormally high?” There are a bunch of different measurements, the most reliable being the satellite data. Less than one degree Celsius is not persistently abnormally high.

    5. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Acbar, I tried twice to link to a webpage on Watts Up With That that shows various readings on recent temp change. Failed twice, which makes me think Disqus blocks that website intentionally. That is disgusting. I had no problem with the chart, but that was copied. Anyway the consistently show less than 1 degree Celsius over that 40 years. That is “persistently abnormally high?” No. You can go find it.

    6. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2021/04/Temp-Chart-2-WUWT.jpg

      Sorry, but I have to disagree that less than one degree Celsius change represents “persistently abnormally high.” That’s the satellite data, far more reliable than surface temps from scattered weather stations. And I could link you to data showing its been fairly flat in recent years (as you can kinda see there) but for some reason (well, I know why) the Disqus program rejects any comment that links to my favorite climate data page.

      When Big Tech cancels something, you can bet it upset their narrative.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        The thing is that you are referencing data that science has collected, right?

        And you are interpreting it differently that science is?

        correct?

        Is that true or do I have it wrong?

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          You are blissfully unaware how much controversy continues to surround this, with the combatants equally enjoying advanced degrees and major university posts and peer-reviewed papers. They are keeping you blissfully unaware. Science! I bet you are still wiping down grocery cans like the idiots told you to do last year….

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            No Steve. The vast majority of the scientific community is looking at the same data. Correct?

            You don’t need to insult guy. It’s a simple question and I truly do not understand you and other skeptics if you’re actually looking at the same data.

            You’re not alleging the data is false just that it does not show you what most of the scientific community interprets it as.

            correct?

          2. WayneS Avatar
            WayneS

            “correct?”

            Hmmmm. Maybe you did finally figure it out…

          3. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            You would know? 😉

  2. CJBova Avatar
    CJBova

    You can see the monthly chart more clearly here.

    https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/defining-climate-normals-new-ways

    I’m still expecting to hear someday that the 2004 9.4 quake in Indonesia, the 2010 8.8 in Chile, and 2011 9.1 in Japan which all affected the tilt of the Earth and rotation have had an effect on weather patterns, like the polar vortexes that have caused so much out of the ordinary weather. Probably won’t find out for decades more if that’s so.

  3. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Why bother to engage? The deniers will be long dead before they can apologize.

    I do think it relevent that Steve is more influenced by the 1 degree drop in 4000 years than the 1 degree rise in 40.

  4. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2021/04/Temp-Chart-WUWT.png

    Thirty years? You will draw conclusions based on 30 years of surface temp data? Uh, no. Take a bit of a longer perspective. But for the constant drumbeat of this largely false narrative since the late 80s, nobody would notice a thing. I can find a similar chart on sea level rise that shows it has been going on far longer than human industrial use of coal, etc. Also related to cyclical level of polar and glacial ice over thousands of years.

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      That has got to be on of the most complicated charts/graphs I have ever seen. One thing is obvious from it however: in the modern age, there has been a sharp and rapid increase in the temperature anomaly.

      1. Stephen Haner Avatar
        Stephen Haner

        I disagree. Look at the other one I just posted in response to Acbar. But in the modern age there are more data points than the reconstructed data.

        1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
          Dick Hall-Sizemore

          The charts are not measuring the same thing. One shows anomalies relative o 1800-1900 and the other shows anomalies from 1991-2020.

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        I think it is important to point out that sophisticated electronics in those Holocene measurements suffered from much larger biases and variances that the devices used post 1970.

        Now, where’s my hockey stick?

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Well, not exactly useless to engage, really trying to understand the skeptics.

    At one point, some folks were claiming that the data itself had been changed but now we seem to be looking at the same data – from conventional scientific sources like NOAA but we have differing views on what that data means.

    As time has gone by, more people do believe that the climate is changing, even many corporations but there still is a solid core of those who have not.

    But it did surprise me a bit when two actual “science” charts from NOAA and Satellite Data were referenced.

  6. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Why bother to engage? The deniers will be long dead before they can apologize.

    I do think it relevent that Steve is more influenced by the 1 degree drop in 4000 years than the 1 degree rise in 40.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      I agree it is useless to engage. The True Believers will be dead before the next ice age begins, but count on it coming. Maybe we’re all that’s stopping it! What that chart shows and YOU deny is that the variability is the constant factor, and natural reasons can’t be ignored.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Given the last “ice age” was 2 million years ago, I suspect you’re wasting money on that fur-lined parka.

        A far more palatable position would be to ask ourselves, “What global temperature is most suitable for human existence?” Basically, if 2 to 3 degrees up from here produces more arable land and greater amounts of fresh water then light those burners!

        In 20,000 years of human existence we’ve finally learned (one method) how to adjust the thermostat. We should take advantage of that, and one way to do that is to make sure we can change it in the other direction. Enter reduced hydrocarbon usage. If shifting to renewables proves we can slow (better reverse) the trend, then what we leave in the ground can be used in the future.

        Surely, you don’t believe that the change isn’t highly correlated to human energy use?

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          Certainly that’s part of it, but as or more important may be land use patterns, destruction of forests, agriculture, urban heat sinks. There are billions of us now, and some of the honest advocates admit they want to change that! Climate change is real, but it is also basically a given, and the jump to Climate Catastrophe is what I reject.

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Well, we’ve some wiggle room left, for sure. But remember, the Moon is something like 1/4, 1/6 that of the Earth with an atmosphere that is 90% man-made. So, we are capable.

            Kinda impressive though when you think about it. 4000 years of energy loss 70% recouped in 200 years. The rate is the scary part.

        2. Anonymous Bosch Avatar
          Anonymous Bosch

          Even if the climate is changing due to human activity I don’t see why anyone should be any more concerned about it than the threat of another catastrophic asteroid impact. Humans don’t have a right to exist, we just do and have for a short time. We won’t exist forever, regardless of our collective angst. That being the case, why should anyone spend any amount of time or energy concerning themselves with a future that they won’t experience and have no ability to control? We’re all going to die and the earth will be destroyed by the sun, get over it and enjoy the flowers.

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Well, that’s ONE long view. Execution or suicide? That’s it? Gimme that spoon, I’ve got an idea.

          2. Anonymous Bosch Avatar
            Anonymous Bosch

            Ok, how long a view does “science” deem fit? Scientific evidence doesn’t argue for action. Emotions are the only basis for any action that does not directly affect the survival of the individual. It seems to me that there are no sound scientific, philosophical, or religious arguments for doing anything about climate change.
            And as far as “execution or suicide” (your words, not mine), the only arguments against them are based entirely in religious sentiment and are therefore not valid in a “scientific” discussion.

          3. StarboardLift Avatar
            StarboardLift

            I’m with you on this. When I consider the long view of Earth, with dinosaurs eventually replaced by homo sapiens, I imagine with excitement what the next iteration of a superior life form might be. Enjoy the blip that we have, in the meantime.

        3. James A. Bacon Avatar
          James A. Bacon

          In point of fact, the last ice age ended about 11,500 years ago. That’s according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period I’ve heard estimates of 15,000 years. Whatever the best estimate, the last ice age did not end 2 million years ago.

          As for “20,000 years of human existence,” Nancy Naive, have you taken to Biblical literalism?

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Recorded history? Or just last, if you prefer. And, wouldn’t Biblical be just 4?

          2. Acbar Avatar
            Acbar

            Sorry, Jim, did not see you’d already said this till after I replied.

        4. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          Last ice age as commonly defined ended about 12,000 years ago. A lot more recent than 3My. E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Yeah, well, a little one I guess. New World humans had to get here somehow and the easiest explanation is the Bering Strait ice bridge.

          2. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            They traversed through Beringia. Where they lived until the Ice Age ended.

  7. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
    energyNOW_Fan

    What happens between Ice Ages? Don’t answer that.
    Article I saw yesterday “How Politics Replaced Religion in America” explains we have adopted religious fervor in our political positions. As an engineer, I especially liked the notion of “conservation of religion”.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/

  8. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    I subscribe to the view that there is an iron rule the cosmos: that any species on any planet that achieves a sufficient level of intelligence to create advanced technology invariably will extinguish itself — accidentally, of course. That’s why we have yet to detect any extraterrestrial intelligence. Sadly, our species is doomed to follow.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      That’s a pretty fatalistic view! Do we really know that prior civilizations have actually destroyed a world?

      Does that mean you do believe that we probably are screwing up the climate and are doomed because of it?

      My take on the extraterrestrial is that the universe is a damned big place and if there is other life it so far away that we’re still not yet advanced enough to plumb those far depths.

      I found this new scientific finding to be fascinating:

      ” All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force.

      Now, physicists say they have found possible signs of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

      The findings come from research carried out at a laboratory near Chicago.

      The four fundamental forces govern how all the objects and particles in the Universe interact with each other.

      For example, gravity makes objects fall to the ground, and heavy objects behave as if they are glued to the floor.

      The UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) said the result “provides strong evidence for the existence of an undiscovered sub-atomic particle or new force”.
      A fifth fundamental force might help explain some of the big puzzles about the Universe that have exercised scientists in recent decades.

      For example, the observation that the expansion of the Universe was speeding up was attributed to a mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy. But some researchers have previously suggested it could be evidence of a fifth force.

      Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, co-presenter of the BBC’s Sky at Night programme, told BBC News: “It is quite mind boggling. It has the potential to turn physics on its head. We have a number of mysteries that remain unsolved. And this could give us the key answers to solve these mysteries.”

      https://www.bbc.com/news/56643677

      The primary thing is that this is science and it’s science that most of us do not really understand and so we have to trust the scientists that have the knowledge.

      Also important to note – that not all scientists will agree , never, but is about consensus of the majority – and even the majority can change their views (and do) when new information is developed.

  9. William O'Keefe Avatar
    William O’Keefe

    I suggest that you who want to challenge Dick read The Global Mean
    Temperature Anomaly Record How it works and why it is misleading
    by Richard S. Lindzen and John R. Christy. There is a chart, among other pieces of valuable information, that actually plots the measurement variations from the mean. Anyone who looks at that and concludes that the earth in burning up has a vivid imagination.

    Saving

  10. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Wow! Y’all have a very dim view of the future. Mankind destroying itself! Crashing asteroids! Ice Ages! Nuclear wars! Downright dim.

    Me?

    I see mankind conquering all, literally all, our environment, extinction, aging, war, disease, famine… all but death, and that reduced to either the result of irreversible adventous accidents or the free choice of when.

    I foresee the development of the machines that do all of the menial tasks we do today. We will be completely free to develop our appreciation for our arts and life. Our only labors reduced to those who service the machines and sex workers. And, with our proclivity for surgar, America will become the 3rd world of low wage, suicidal, bot-servicing video-gamers.

  11. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Wow! Y’all have a very dim view of the future. Mankind destroying itself! Crashing asteroids! Ice Ages! Nuclear wars! Downright dim.

    Me?

    I see mankind conquering all, literally all, our environment, extinction, aging, war, disease, famine… all but death, and that reduced to either the result of irreversible adventurous accidents or the free choice of when.

    I foresee the development of the machines that do all of the menial tasks we do today. We will be completely free to develop our appreciation for our arts and life. Our only labors reduced to those who service the machines and sex workers. And, with our proclivity for surgar, America will become the 3rd world of low wage, suicidal, bot-servicing video-gamers.

    1. Anonymous Bosch Avatar
      Anonymous Bosch

      Actually…we’re already replacing the hookers with sex robots. If we do survive we’ll probably be like the Eloi.

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