Some records are more significant than others.
And some records are being used to hype normal temperature variability in unfortunate ways.
Consider yesterday (Sunday). SeaTac Airport beat its daily record (77F0 for that specific date, reaching 81°F.
The Seattle Times puts the 81°F day on the FRONT PAGE! Must be a slow news day.
The Seattle Times story was heavy on hype, with several unfounded statements (see below).
Temperatures scorched past their record high.
Foreshadowing the inevitable summer of drought. (This is total nonsense, by the way).
Should you worry about the RECORD high temperature yesterday? Read on.
Why Monday's record did not mean much.
Monday's record high was a daily record.
Daily records are frequently broken because there are so many opportunities to do so (365 chances each year!). Breaking an annual record (the warmest day of the year) is much more significant.
Breaking the daily high-temperature record yesterday was particularly lame.
Why? Because the previous high temperature on that date (77F) was particularly low.
You can see this by looking at the plot (at SeaTac) of observed temperatures (blue lines) and record highs (red shading). The previous record high temperature on that day (77F) was anomalously COLD. The coldest daily high for ANY DAY IN MAY. Even the end of April had warmer record highs.
The 81F record is still a low record high in May at SeaTac, cooler than ALL the other record highs for the month.
Breaking this wimply record has little meaning and does not foretell an inevitable summer drought as stated by the Seattle Times reporter (Conrad Swanson).
The latest forecasts are emphatic that there will be a cool down, with light precipitation returning.
The latest European Center Forecast has SeaTac temperatures dropping to normal (highs in the 60s).
Showers will return on Friday and Saturday (see below).
The kind of hype and exaggeration of heat and drought found in the Seattle Times and several amateur YouTube channels is unfortunate.
People are being misinformed and made to worry without cause. Hyping climate change and exaggerating normal climate variability may get more clicks and revenue, but the costs of such misinformation are substantial.
Yes, it's obvious that statistics about highs and lows can be terribly misleading. In the last couple of years I've started paying attention to how long daily "highs" and "lows" actually last. And the last few days here that peaked at 90F are a good example of how overstated "the high" might go down in record-books. The high "phenomenon" (a blip as it were) only lasted for 5 minutes in full sun. The actual conditions were not "sizzling" at all; it was a pleasant, moderate mid-70's to mid-80's day. Our evenings and nights have remained typically cool (high 30's to mid 40s). And as for comparing date-specific data outliers between years - your points about the folly of that are spot-on. Weather and nature aren't "clockworks" and never have been.
ReplyDeleteAmateur weather talkers and writers in Seattle media have learned to wreck and continue the downfall of journalism, vis-à-vis, meteorology in western Washington in particular by propagating to us as if true: "Lies, damn lies, and [weather] statistics," attributed to Mark Twain and others.
ReplyDeleteThis type of extremely dishonest reporting is really infuriating. Mainly because they, the Seattle Times, are fooling a lot of people and won't ever see any consequences from it.
ReplyDeleteAll true, but the larger story is the number of high temp records being set vastly outstrips the number of low temp records being set. Climate change “news” is actually very boring as the planet is just very gradually heating up. It’s like the federal deficit- something that just gradually gets worse and worse so we ignore it. Weather is exciting, but the more important story is climate change, so newspapers use weather to talk about climate. I know that drives Cliff nuts, but without that conflation it would just never be talked about. A few articles from Cliff talking about the likely local impacts of climate change 25, 50, and a hundred years from now would be helpful for balance here.
ReplyDeleteAs I read it, the reasoning here, in effect, is that the end (bringing attention to a significant but "boring" long-term trend) justifies the means (weather coverage that reads more like propaganda than actual news, and that plays very fast and loose with statistical evidence).
DeleteUnfortunately, rather than achieving the desired end, the means employed are far more likely simply to squander The Times' only meaningful assets: its credibility and authority with its audience. To see this, one need look no farther than the current conversation, which is focused entirely on the Times' infatuation with low-grade B.S. rather than on long-term climate trends and their impacts.
The Times is paying a terribly high price and not getting much in return, it seems, even when that value is measured by the paper's own, shockingly limited, definition.
The young interns at the Times weather department would love to tell us that the end is near. But every time they try, along comes Cliff Mass who bursts their bubble.
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