[Vision2020] Despite La Nina, Moscow's Meteorological Winter (Dec./Jan./Feb.) Saw Below Ave. Precipitation

[Paul Rumelhart]

On 03/09/2011 01:46 PM, Ted Moffett wrote:
> Good grief!
>
> You take the time and trouble to graph out precipitation data from
> another website, yet you don't simply search the weather.com website
> to find the info you ask for that is easy to find?
>
> More head games, I guess...
>
> WTF!
>
> But I'll play along with your game...

The truth is, I had taken my lunch hour to gather that data and was 
already running late for getting back to work.  I didn't think I had the 
time to search for the link, compare numbers, and to try to find out 
where they both gathered their data from.  If you thought that I was 
trying to manipulate you or if you thought this was unforgivable 
behavior on my part, I apologize.  It had taken me longer to gather the 
data and make the chart than I had at first anticipated.

> Read at weather.com website the historical average precipitation for
> each month of the year for Moscow, Idaho, showing Dec. at 3.14 inches,
> Jan. at 2.99 inches and Feb. at 2.52 inches, for a total of 8.65
> inches for the meteorological winter:
> http://www.weather.com/outlook/driving/interstate/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/83843?s_oid=http://www.weather.com/outlook/driving/interstate/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/83843&s_oidt=0
> ---------------
> As to differences between the weather data you offered and
> weather.com, I have no clue.

Me neither.  If I can find the time soon, I'll try to find out what data 
sources they use and report back.  I have a couple of other projects in 
the pipeline, though, so it might take me some time.

Thank you for the link.

> Call NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  Maybe climate
> scientists Gavin Schmidt (
> http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/gschmidt.html ) or James Hansen (
> http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/jhansen.html ) can resolve the
> discrepancy!
>
> Just joking...
>
> By the way, you might want to study this important research on climate
> noted below from Goddard, from those climate science government funded
> politically biased incompetents or frauds... (scathing sarcasm
> scarcely disguised):
>
> http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20101014/

I have a couple of comments on this study (I've snipped some of the 
article for brevity):

> How Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth's Temperature
> October 14, 2010
>
> Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's
> greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study
> shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the
> atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.
>

> The climate forcing experiment described in Science was simple in
> design and concept — all of the non-condensing greenhouse gases and
> aerosols were zeroed out, and the global climate model was run forward
> in time to see what would happen to the greenhouse effect

This study is describing the outputs of a climate model that they 
developed, using assumptions they think are true.

> "Our climate modeling simulation should be viewed as an experiment in
> atmospheric physics, illustrating a cause and effect problem which
> allowed us to gain a better understanding of the working mechanics of
> Earth's greenhouse effect, and enabled us to demonstrate the direct
> relationship that exists between rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and
> rising global temperature," Lacis said.

I would agree that this simulation should be viewed as an experiment, 
*after* it has been validated by real-world observations.  Until then, 
as far as I can tell from this article, it's not an "experiment", it's a 
description of a hypothesis.  The fact that their computer simulation 
suggested this hypothesis is beside the point.

Paul