Dog Days

The mercury is going up...again. That's the forecast I've heard all day long today. It's the Top of the Hour Weather Tease on the AM Talker I had on while fixing the root cracks in Mom's driveway. I'll put the asphalt emulsion top-coat on in the morning. It's going to dry fast in the heat. Friday will be even hotter, before the cooling begins for the weekend...we'll see...

I don't know if there's less chatter about the other Heating Up Forecast lately, or maybe the name's been morphed from Global Warming into Climate Change...hedging their bets? I would...satellite temperature data show no warming since 1998. This means, dear reader, that if you are 28 years old, there has been no measurable Global Warming in your entire adult life!

I read an interesting Paper over at Anthony Watt's Blog today. It correlates the five "Ocean Products" of the AMSR-E instrument flying aboard the Aqua Satellite. Wiki has the scoop on Aqua here.

The Five Ocean Products are: Sea Surface Temperature (SST), Near-Surface Wind Speed, Vertically-Integrated Water Vapor, Vertically-Integrated Cloud Water, and Rain Rate. Dr Spencer plots these data, and the trend average, and whaddya know? The trend is down across the board. Granted it's just over seven years worth of observations, clearly not enough to declare a trend, or extrapolate a cycle from this tiny arc of data. Spencer conveniently includes the PDO data as well!

Aqua's AMSR-E also keeps an eye on Arctic Ice and Snow, but those data were excluded from this paper for clarity. Some may scoff...Ah-Ha! Doctoring the story! Let's look at "The Rest of the Story" re Arctic Ice.

This was going to be The Year according to NASA that the Arctic Ocean would be clear of Pack Ice. Some AGW Activists chose 2009 to focus World attention on this event by making expeditions to the North Pole in kayaks, in a Solar Powered Sailboat, and by Dog Sleds if memory serves. Not much news has been generated by these Warmin' Crusaders.

Well, actually plenty of news was generated, it just didn't get reported by the Legacy Media Outlets. It seems that the "unusually heavy" amount of Pack Ice thwarted these Climate Heroes in the early days of their respective expeditions, causing them to enlist the help of some less Gaia-friendly petroleum powered Ice Breakers and helicopters to affect their rescues. Plainly, these developments did not advance their Sky-Is-Falling Narratives, so I guess no Press Releases were issued...Curious, isn't this Good News? I'm calling it a "Happy Beginning" We could save Trillions of US Dollars if this continues...no need to "Cap and Trade" ourselves into poverty, Gaia didn't need our help after all! OK DC, on to something more Cost Effective!

Read about the surprised voyageurs here, and their Aug 17th Log Entry here. A crewman's sister blogs about their troubles too. It's not just funny business up North either, while AGW Alarmists cry from the rafters about retreating pack ice in the Arctic, the antarctic ice is piling up...BigTime!

Remember the Eastern Yin/Yang philosophy? It's science really...Nature is all about balance. Today is September 10th, 2009...the cream-filled middle of Hurricane Season. I notice that Hurricane Fred became the Second Atlantic Hurriacane of the 2009 Season on Labor Day. Fred got it together near the Cape Verde Islands. In my mind this is a paradox. During El Niño years, the Atlantic has below-normal numbers of tropical storms, named storms, and hurricanes. The data says the Pacific is acting more like a La Niña season, yet minimal Atlantic activity...could be our becalmed star...could be the PDO change, or Aqua's 5 Ocean Products....time will tell.

One thing...it will be interesting to find out just what is happening.