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John M. Lynch is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett the Honors College at Arizona State University. He's also affiliated with ASU's Center for Biology & Society. When he's not an historian of anti-evolutionism, he's an evolutionary morphologist. Much to his surprise, in 2007 he was named the Arizona Professor of the Year. No doubt his students were surprised as well.
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Posted on: August 20, 2007 11:50 PM, by John Lynch
Average number of 110+ degree days at Phoenix Sky Harbor per year by decade:
1950s: 6.7
1960s: 10.3
1970s: 17.0
1980s: 19.0
1990s: 13.6
2000s: 21.6
Notice a trend? No comment necessary. The record for the number of days in a year to reach at least 110 degrees is 28. Today was number 26 for this year. (source)
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Comments
Suggestive, but not indicative. If there's any location in America susceptible to the urban heat island effect, it's Sky Harbor Airport (and the Phoenix metropolitan area in general, for that matter).
Posted by: Leszek Pawlowicz | August 21, 2007 1:22 AM
Yes, the heat island effect is certainly in play here. I don't think there can be any doubt about it. But I suspect that there's something else going on as well.
Posted by: John Lynch | August 21, 2007 1:53 AM
Not only the urban heat island, but the fact that the figures will be fudged, and upwards.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
This is a NASA offshoot.
They have been happily creating man made GW, by adjusting figures up.
This is on top of the UHI.
Nick
Posted by: Nick | August 21, 2007 4:38 AM
Yes, of course anthropogenic global warming is fabricated. How stupid of me not to know that. *slaps head*
Posted by: John Lynch | August 21, 2007 11:40 AM
I have no doubt that AGW is playing a role in this; my comment just meant to point out that the effect of AGW on the Sky Harbor data is hard to pull out.
Arguing with people like Nick is a waste of time. They already know what the "answer" is, and do the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la-la-la I can't hear you" when you point out that their "facts" are wrong.
Posted by: Leszek Pawlowicz | August 21, 2007 3:11 PM
The procedure that is used to adjust the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data Nick cited without explanation is described here.
The adjustment that makes the biggest difference and produces the upward trend is the adjustment for time of observation bias:
The station history adjustment program (accounting for such things as weather station location moves) also accounts for some of that change, as does the adjustment for the replacement of liquid-in-glass thermometers with Maximum-Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) sensors.
Posted by: Jim Lippard | August 21, 2007 4:04 PM