2 August 2011
Bartlesville, Oklahoma Reaches 110° at Solar Noon (1 PM CDT)
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Max temps. as on 1: 10 PM from the Okla. Mesonet. The Bartlesville airport (not shown) reached 110°. Today may turn out to be one of the hottest days ever recorded in the Sooner State.
Take a look at the IR GOES image below, and you can clearly see where the hottest ground is. Keep in mind that the thermal IR satellite surface temps. are a combination of trees and grass etc., but it’s still a good look at the areas that will see the worst of the heat today.
Image from NASA MSFC here in Huntsville.
The amazing heat is even more amazing when you look at the data compiled by the National Climate Data Center.
77 stations set all time record highs over the past 30 days. Compare with the number of stations that set all time record lows.(from NOAA-NCDC)
The daily records below are just as incredible.
Daily temperature records from NCDC. Notice how the record highs far outpace the record lows and have been for over a year. They have actually been doing it for over a decade.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
Dan
Are these more extreme events being seen in the context of climate change in the US or is it just seen as normal variation?
One hot summer does not climate change make, but the fact that we continue to see many more high temp. records than low records is exactly what would be expected in a world where the climate is warming. All but one of the last 17 months have seen highs far outnumber the lows record wise.
Dan, thanks, understand what you are saying. I guess my question was more around the issue of – do such events have any influence on US public opinion?
That is the interesting question. Hot summers have ( if polls are to be believed) led more people to believe all the scientists, and ignore the fossil fuel funded groups who try and manufacture doubt. What’s interesting is that there is growing evidence that the extreme weather seen in the past few winters may be even more a result of climate changes than the heat.
There is a percentage of Americans who will never believe the science because to do so would require a complete change of their political world view ( see Bob Altemeyer’s book http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/).