The headline in E&E News, WOWT-TV, Scientific American, WorldNewsNetwork, and other media outlets this week, “Unprecedented Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest Driven by Climate Change” couldn’t possibly be more unscientific.
With absolutely no analysis, no historical context, and nothing but conjecture, author Anne. C. Mulkern eschewed science for advocacy in her reporting of the brief Pacific Northwest (PNW) heatwave this week.
Yes, the heatwave set all-time high-temperature records in Washington, Oregon, and Canada. But consider this: At best, we have about 150 years of reliable weather records for the PNW, so a “black swan” outlier event like this isn’t surprising.
It’s happened before, most certainly. We just weren’t around to observe it. After all, Native Americans did not keep written weather records.
High- (and low-) temperature records are nothing new. But it is important to look at the past because data shows us that more high-temperature records were set during the first half of the twentieth century than during the past 50 years.
Even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirms this.
But many climate activists immediately pointed to “climate change” as the cause, even though this week would have become a record weather event with or without recent modest warming.
It is said that “climate change,” aka global warming, added about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, but the temperature of the past week far exceeded that.
The temperatures were so high, the small warming of 2°F of climate change was dwarfed. In cities, the “urban heat island effect” was also a bigger cause in this case.
Portland and Seattle hit all-time highs of 116 and 108 Monday, while Lytton, Canada, surged to a national record of 118. The EPA reports,
“…the heat island effect results in daytime temperatures in urban areas about 1–7°F higher than temperatures in outlying areas.”
The previous all-time record high for Portland was 107. Seattle’s all-time high was 103. Medford, Oregon, tied its all-time record Monday of 115 degrees.
It didn’t get hotter there than ever before because Medford was south of the center of the high-pressure dome.
It is often said that “weather is not climate” and that’s true. It is particularly true in this case.
The heatwave was entirely a weather pattern issue, not a climate issue. A large high-pressure dome (sometimes called a heat-dome) over the PNW is not unheard of, but this one was particularly strong. In fact, it was a result of a perfect storm of weather pattern confluence.
Similar unique weather pattern confluences happen each year to create major blizzards, torrential floods, and tornado outbreaks. It’s business as usual for Earth.
High pressure rotates clockwise, causes sinking air, and creates downslope winds (Foehn winds), which heat up because the air compresses as it flowed down the slope of the Cascade Mountains from east to west towards Portland and Seattle.
It’s like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. It’s the same effect as using a bicycle pump to fill a tire. The pump gets warm, not from friction, but because the gas (air) is being compressed.
Conversely, aerosol cans get colder, because gas under pressure is escaping and decompression occurs inside the can. This is described by science, known as the Adiabatic process.
Most interestingly, another record wasn’t trumpeted by the news media. With the heat dome high-pressure moving east, Seattle and Portland saw record rates of cooling.
The National Weather Service office in Portland reported another new all-time record.
“Huge cooling Monday evening inland, with temperatures falling from above 100 deg to the 60s/70s. Portland set a new record, with a drop of 52 deg, breaking the old record of 48 deg set in Sep 1988. Cooler today, with highs 85 to 93 inland, and 60s on the coast.”
That all-time record cooling event didn’t get much press because it goes against the groupthink narrative that “climate change” causes only bad things. Plus, the news media is often fixated on disaster more than good news.
When record heat and record cooling both happen within a 24-hour period, that’s inarguably weather, not climate.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines it well:
“Weather reflects short-term conditions of the atmosphere while climate is the average daily weather for an extended period of time at a certain location. … Weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season.”
Finally, in a hugely ironic twist, Scientific American, the same outlet that claimed the heatwave was driven by “climate change” confirms what NOAA and I just told you, saying Don’t Be Fooled: Weather Is Not Climate.
You can’t have it both ways.
UPDATE: Some of the high-temperature records have already proven to be erroneous according to the National Weather Service:
Read more at Climate Realism
An anthropogenic climate change angle is routinely linked to an awful lot of real and more approachable science, whether it be ecology, anthropology or archaeology. In this sense, it is like an imposter at a medieval court, solidifying its fake position by association.
In a similar vein, we are repeatedly reminded that weather isn’t climate, when things don’t go the imposter’s way. However, weather certainly is climate when it suits the imposter’s baggage train for it to be so.
That baggage train is full of empty suitcases rather than fine tailoring. After all, AGW science, like the proverbial king, is prone to not wearing any clothes at all.
It is a wonder, in this supposed age of education and information, that more people haven’t seen through it yet…
While global warming is 100% a statistical fiction as there is no global temperature calling one summer’s record heat wave climate change is impossible without knowing the weather data for many summers past. Also any regional anomaly in hot weather must take account concurrent anomalies in cold weather. Today record cold winter temperatures in Antarctica at – 62* C and in New Zealand, South Africa and Australia surely put in doubt the relevance of a heat wave in the Pacific North West. Do the math and the globe is cooling statistically notwithstanding heat waves up North.
Very cold in French Alps during the current Tour de France
The Alarmist Weather Channel offered a chart this morning that showed weather – related deaths according to temperature, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning. Temperature was #1, only because cold was not included. Pathetic, considering how many died in Texas recently.
Watts is correct. This NW heat event reminds me of superstorm Sandy, which was the confluence of an Alberta Clipper and an Atlantic tropical depression.
Of course, with preconceived notions, gullible people will blame it on fossil fuels.
To clarify, Heat was #1 in their chart. Cold was not included. (Both are temperature)
Dew points were moderately low. Dry air both heats up much more effectively and quickly but also allows for quick, significant cooling. Add the fact that the interior mountainous areas became a surface heat low pressure area, it sucked in much cooler air from the Pacific ocean leaving communities on the coast to nearly 100 miles inland very comfortable.
Also, I had to laugh because the more the NWS tried to hype the record heat it only proved that this is actually a rather common event as there was more than a handful of different years mentioned where records were broken.[ some going back to the 1800’s. This of course does not count the many years that very high temperatures occurred but did not quite reach record status.