Why "xkcd on the Cold Truth About Warming" is wrong

We will proceed in a scientific manner.

Is the xkcd comic true? (reproduced with permission)

Mouse over text: 'You see the same pattern all over. Take Detroit--' 'Hold on. Why do you know all these statistics offhand?' 'Oh, um, no idea. I definitely spend my evenings hanging out with friends, and not curating a REALLY NEAT database of temperature statistics. Because, pshh, who would want to do that, right? Also, snowfall records.'

It's a complicated comic, with multiple claims, and it is used to deflect commentary and concerns by people, who notice when it's really cold. So, is any of it true?

None of the black hatted characters claims are true.  And the source the comic creator used is a biased web site that publishes deceptive "science", and is also wrong on the internet.

Looking at the winter trend for Missouri shows why people complaining about the cold In Missouri (and elsewhere) are not delusional,  While temperature data doesn't show the snow and ice, that data also shows the increase in cold winters.

The Tmin (minimum daily temperature) shows it clearly, colder winters.

Comparing with the Tmax confirms it is a trend

Since trends are sensitive at times to start times, here's the 30 year trend using 2014 as the end date.  (the comic was about Jan 2014)

A 30 year trend is solid evidence for climate trends, 

You can see the areas using the GISS maps, the twent year trend for Jan-Feb makes it obvious.

The trend shows up using Jan-Mar.  

It doesn't just seem like winters are getting colder in some cities, they actually are.  It's why the xkcd comic is wrong.

That's a shame, since I really like his work.

The tale of a weather station, and how BEST messed it up

While all the surface data is adjusted, BEST is an easy target,  Fish in a barrel actually.

Here is the actual data, from GHCN

Location

Dale Enterprises is a quality controlled station with no changes, aside from adding an electronic sensor in 1995, but they kept the old mercury instruments as well.

This is what Watts showed in 2010, about the USHCN adjustments

Here is the current GHCN adjustment, using the BOM tool

Compared to the actual data

And here is what BEST did to the data

Just awful "science" at work there.  Instead of using a quality station to adjust the bad stations, they adjust the good station to match the bad ones.

Here's a nearby bad station moved next to water treatment plant, showing a drastic increase in the trend.

Google maps of water treatment plant where that station rests.

The Dale Enterprise station is just north of there.

BEST and the rest of the data analysis adjusted the good station, not the bad ones.They are wrong, but they probably don't even know it.

Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse

From a blog page by Connolley (no longer available from the original page)  This content is also available here by Spencer.  As well as elsehwere.

XXIV. Note on the Theory of the GreenhouseBy Professor R. W. Wood (Communicated by the Author) 

THERE appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.
I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the "open," the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents. 

To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a themometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 oC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate. 

There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 oC. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 o, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped. 

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions. 

I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.

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Connolley then adds:

Why is his second to last paragraph wrong?

Firstly, note that unlike the experiments described earlier, this paragraph merely expresses his opinion. 

Second, although the troposphere is subject to convection, the stratosphere is not.
Third, in contradiction to his assertion about "the very low radiating power of a gas", the troposphere is largely opaque to infra-red radiation, which is why convection is so important in moving heat up from the surface. Only in the higher (colder) atmosphere where there is less water vapour is the atmosphere simultaneously somewhat, but not totally, transparent to infra-red and thus permits radiation to play a part. 

W. M. Connolley, June 2000.

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Here are the results of Spencer doing the experiment, with commentary.

Snow and climate change

Does a warmer world have more snow or less?  This is no idle question.  It might be both.

Temperature and tornadoes

Because of the lack of  winter and early spring tornadoes, I checked the periods with no tornadoes, for the US.  When it's cold there are no tornadoes.

This is due to the lack of warm moist air meeting the cold fronts.  Strong very cold fronts prevent tornadoes from happening.

They also result in a lot more snow.

Colder weather means less snow, warmer weather means more snow

Hard to believe, but it's true!

OK that's a bad joke.  Of course it's not true.

Does it have to be cold to snow?

This seems like a stupid question, but the importance of the principle is simple.

Yes, it has to be cold to snow.  It does not snow when it's warm.

The Pocket Idiot's Guide to More Not So Useless Facts

Extensive post on this coming up.