Saturday, May 30, 2015

Climate Disasters are a Result of Global Warming?

Almost everyday, we are told that some natural disaster is a result of global warming and its associated climate change.  Last year, 2014 was declared to be the hottest year ever.  California's drought is supposed to be a direct result of hotter and drier conditions.  When Katrina hit New Orleans, it was all because of global warming.

Logically, if all of the above were true, a place like Los Angeles (almost ground zero for the drought) would be seeing temperature records falling like rocks as the earth continued to warm.  To that point, I present this chart of historical averages and record lows and highs for Los Angeles from Intellicast, who maintains a massive database of historical weather data for many cities in the country:

click on image to enlarge
Contrary to supposed belief, there hasn't been a single-day's temperature record broken for any given month since 1990 when the city's all time high of 112 was established for June.  So, for 25 years, no records have been broken.  Also, the month of December's record high of 92 has stood for 77 years and the hottest 4th of July occurred way back in 1907.

Then, there's New Orleans;  ground zero for hurricane Katrina in 2005:


For this city, there hasn't been a record temperature broken since 1993; and the record for any day in February has stood since 1899.

Neither of these two cities has seen a high temperature record broken since the early 1990's. Either they have been exempt from global warming or, maybe it isn't as worrisome as we have been led to believe.   If 2014 was truly the hottest year on record, then, why were no records broken in any month for these two cities in that year?

It's a little hard to believe that rest of the world was hot while we remained cool in 2014.


References:

Climate Change Has Arrived in California (Op-Ed): http://www.livescience.com/38913-climate-change-has-arrived-in-california.html

Hurricane Katrina and global warming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_and_global_warming

Intellicast: Los Angeles: http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?month=7

One for the Record Books: 2014 Officially Hottest Year: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/record-2014-hottest-year-18502

pb


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