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The first part shows that the cooler temperatures aren't a global phenomenon--of course, the raw data will be included in the average temperature for the pertinent days and nights, weeks, months, and year. But it basically say, "Cold air's coming down--used to do it, sometimes does it, it's doing it."
The rest of the article is the problem.
'In most years over the past few decades, the opposite has been true: there has been lower-than-average pressure over the Arctic, and higher-than-average pressure over the mid-latitudes — the middle of which cuts through Maine, across the Great Lakes and on to Oregon.'
Ah. It's meaningless for global warming that we have cold air. Problem is, if that's meaningless, the reverse is meaningless.
"That pattern allows the jet stream to blow unimpeded from west to east and keeps the cold Arctic air largely north of the United States. The result tends to be warmer temperatures across much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. "
Mechanism. Eh.
"No one is quite sure what drives these flip-flops in air pressure. "
Well, if nobody knows, then it's hard to state the cause.
'“I tend to think of it as a random thing,” said John M. Wallace, who is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think we understand any reasons why it goes one way one year and the other way another year.” '
So the reason that it's been warmer than average in winters for the last number of years is, he thinks, random. Nobody's sure why. Of course, those temperatures were, like this year's will be, factored into the pertinent days' daytime and nighttime temperatures, the daily averages, the weekly averages, the monthly average, and the yearly average. So when we hear that X is the warmest (or 5th warmest, or 50th warmest) that's part of the data.
Then again, this doesn't run all that counter to IPCC-style science--they just do averages and trends (well, adjusting things as necessary, whatever that means--some days I think it means one thing, other days something else, today I don't think of it as very meaningful at all). Just the jocular stuff where everything in particular is tied in the public's, or some people's, imagination as an indication of AGW.
'What does seem clear is that these oscillations have nothing to do with global warming, or, for that matter, global cooling. For one, they’re not new. And this winter’s cold has not been global. Santa, by North Pole standards, has been experiencing a balmy winter.'
Well, that's not entirely true. They figure in. The oddity of such cold winters not being common for the last 40 or 50 years figures in. Because they're part of the data set. Whether or not this winter's cold is global is beside the point when you deal in averages. Even under GW, some areas haven't had temperature changes at all and others have dropped. Averages are where it's at.
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