70°F/80°F/90°F/100°F -- NYC 1970s/2000s

[ljgeoff]

I'm trying to wrap my head around what a .9°C increase in the average world temperature between 2010 and 2019 will look like. What I've thought of doing is to make a fingerprint of the averages of cities -- what they were in the 1970s and what they were from 2000-2009.

I started with NYC; I dunno why. I've got a list of about 50 more cities that I want to do.

Here are the averages:

1970-1979
70-79 °F ------ 68.3 days
80-89 °F ------ 61.8 days
90-99 °F ------ 11.3 days
100-104 °F --- .2 days
above 104 °F - 0

I split up the 2000s because it was going up so fast:

2000-2004
70-79 °F ------ 62.8 days
80-89 °F ------ 65 days
90-99 °F ------ 12 days
100-104 °F --- .2 days
above 104 °F - 0

2005-2009
70-79 °F ------ 58 days
80-89 °F ------ 72.8 days
90-99 °F ------ 12 days
100-104 °F --- 0 days
above 104 °F - 0

If you average the whole of the 2000's, you get:

2000-2009
70-79 °F ------ 60.4days
80-89 °F ------ 68.9 days
90-99 °F ------ 12 days
100-104 °F --- .1 days
above 104 °F - 0

The two year average of 2010 and 2011 is

70-79 °F ------ 61.5 days
80-89 °F ------ 105 days
90-99 °F ------ 26.6 days
100-104 °F --- 2 days
above 104 °F - 0

For comparison, here's the 1970-79 average for Baltimore MD

70-79 °F ------ 68.3 days
80-89 °F ------ 75.3 days
90-99 °F ------ 19.7 days
100-104 °F --- 0 days
above 104 °F - 0

And the 1970-79 averages for Richmond, VA

70-79 °F ------ 74.9 days
80-89 °F ------ 85.3 days
90-99 °F ------ 30.7 days
100-104 °F --- .6 days
above 104 °F - 0

It would be better to take the 1960-1989 average, but large chunks of the temperature data is missing from Wunderground, the website I'm using.

It looks like, to me, that NYC has traveled on to Baltimore and is heading at quite a clip toward Richmond. One could argue that the 2010-2011 average is too small of a data set, but I think that it shows a trend -- and with this year being a new low for ice loss in the arctic, next year will probably be as warm or warmer

Comments

[wild_irises]

I thought of you when I saw this link, the first piece of tiny hopefulness I've seen in climate change studies in a long time.

Which is not to underestimate the problem.

[ljgeoff]

It's so hard for me to get my mind around some of this stuff. Yes, if we make massive cuts or find some way to cheaply scoop massive amounts of carbon out of the air, Greenland will recover. It *is* a hopeful message, if you think that we're doomed no matter what we do (and we aren't!) but... I just don't believe that we'll get our collective acts together in time.

Honestly? I think that in about ten or fifteen years, we'll panic and try to do some kind of geoengineering thing. Who knows? Maybe it'll work.

[pickledginger]

This is a really keen project! And I do like your image of NYC slowly sailing southward. (Imagine the wake!)

I think decade by decade is likely to be better than lumping together bigger gobs of data. (Are you using Calc or Excel or what? Wonder if the NWS has a database that is set up for easy data-grabbing.) And looking at winter lows and highs might be good, too. And looking at annual temperature extremes. And analyzing all the weather data that ever were! ... Or maybe not.

But yes, fascinating. Thank you.

Come sail away, come sail away; come and sail away with meeee.

[ljgeoff]

I'm using Excel and tediously going through Wunderground's historical data calendar, month by month.

I have this idea that I could make a kind of 70's and current fingerprint for each city, and then match the current fingerprint with the 70's fingerprint, to see where the cities are -- like if I made graphs on flimsy clear plastic, and colored in the graphs and then held them up to each other. And, for example, if I know that NYC is in Baltimore, and Baltimore is in Richmond, then I know that, soon enough, NYC will be heading to 70's Richmond.

Re: Come sail away, come sail away; come and sail away with meeee.

[pickledginger]

The SW, meanwhile, is headed for conditions I am not sure have been seen before outside equatorial Africa -- especially if we let the folks down there keep depleting fossil aquifers turn the desert green. (There's a new project aiming to kill wetlands and the associated aquifer to keep the party going in Vegas.) Federal funds they want, too. Sigh.

We know better.

But every time I start dreaming up big relocation projects, I have this guilty thought: they know better, too. If we are going to lose big chunks of the population ... we could do worse. Except, of course, the golf course guys would land on their well-groomed and -shod feet.

Ahem. On a less depressive note -- keen project! eventually, you ought to be able to set the background as clear, then have some data-analytical fun!

What flows to Vegas stays in Vegas

[pickledginger]

http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=11352

Yup, found the link.