April 2013 was one cold month in Anchorage. The average April day in Anchorage has a high of 44 degrees F. One April 2013 day beat the average (49 degrees F on April 22nd) and another made it to the average….but the other 28….oh well. On April 10th, the high was 21 and the following morning it got down to 8. The average day in April 2013 was over 6 degrees colder than the average April of the last 97 years.
Wow! No wonder I’m a doubter of climate change.
I live in the one part of the world that is supposed to have been the most impacted by global climate change. Just look at this chart I lifted from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Synthesis Report.
Alaska and western Canada warmed more than the rest of the world…between 1970 and 2004. I moved to Alaska in 1972, so I was OK with the new warmer world. That 5 degrees F made for longer growing seasons, and warmer summers. It was great. Only one problem…..it went away. We’ve had lots of colder than average weather since this chart was prepared in 2005.
The IPCC likes to use observed changes as a part of their argument for global climate change. Short term observations personalize the argument. This connects with people, but as a scientific argument….well….it’s a stupid argument in a climate cycle that lasts 100,000 years. Particularly when natural climate variation is taken into account. But it’s fun to personalize the data. And two can play at this silly game…. it’s cold out there right now…and the IPCC predicted the opposite.
I wonder what the IPCC will say about that in their new AR5 due out in just 2 years.
Climate S.W.A.G. 