So far, for the winter of 2012/2013 the winning lottery numbers for December 2012 were 109 and for January 2013 81.
The National Climatic Data Center has been ranking months, seasons and years from 1 to 119 since 1895 with 1 being the coldest possible temperature average ranking and 119 being the warmest possible temperature average during 2013. In the Climate Lottery game, I've defined each individual lottery number as rankings for each month for the lower 48 states, Power Ball numbers as those for each season, and Mega Ball numbers as those for each year. As we keep seeing over and over again the Climate Lottery game is rigged towards those higher number rankings due to global warming.
January 2013 was the 39th warmest January in recorded history with a Climate Lottery Pick Ranking of 81.
Warm conditions for most of the lower 48 states aided to raise averages to high levels during the early part of the month and last week of the month. The Weather Channel named eight winter storms...Freyer, Gandolf, Helen, Iago, Jove, Kahn, Luna, and Magnus...for the month; but despite the snow and ice, averages for December remained high, which only proves that winter weather can still occur across portions of the country despite the warming trend. The early January cold snap in the West produced much below averages from the Rockies to the West Coast. The overall raking for the U.S. came up as 81...well above the average of 59 and a red number as rankings go. Looking at the map you can pick out each individual state ranking. The overall ranking of 81 is not an average of the 48 individual state rankings; rather the ranking is a comparison of temperature averages for the lower 48 states for September since 1895.
Again, I am getting all of my ranking numbers from the National Climatic Data Center.
The link for the National Climatic Data Center's Climate at a Glance Site where the rankings are archived is: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
I'm keeping the format on all of my charts the same as on my previous posts. The average ranking for 2013 is
59 (or 60) since the coldest ranking would be 1 and the hottest would be 119. I have color coded all rankings for this post at or below 38 blue and all those at or above 79 red with rankings + or -- 19 from the median value of 59 black.
Amazingly, the first nine months of 2012 had rankings above 100 setting the stage for that "Mega-Ball" ranking for 2012 of 118. Thirty out of the first thirty seven months of the 2010's have been red...a phenomenon I attribute to anthropogenic global warming.
The following are some record statistics for this decade, so far. The number of daily records (including ties) is depicted for each month. Note that the difference between the number of daily record lows and daily record highs correlates well with the average monthly temperature rankings (or individual climate lottery numbers). The higher number the ranking, usually, the greater difference between the number of daily record high and daily record low numbers (including those for the year...the Mega-Ball rankings). This phenomenon is very much a concern during the summer months when record heat can cause deaths.
And for this year the pattern has started out warm, as well in January:
I'm getting all of my surface record statistics from the following site: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/
I started a log of daily record high and daily record low reports back on 1/1/2000, which led to a peer reviewed study headed by Dr. Jerry Meehl of UCAR.
Details on the record study can be found at: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49508/description/Record_chills_are_falling_but_in_number_only
For a reference to my last "Climate Dice" post and forecast for the winter see:
http://www.weather.com/news/climate-lottery-december-20121212
February 2013 has started out on the mild side across many portions of the country, as well, despite the powerful storm dubbed Nemo in the Northeast, so it's highly likely that the "Power-Ball" ranking number for winter 2012/2013 will wind up above average. We'll see how the exact "drawing" went down on my next post, which I'll write when NCDC processes the data for this winter around March 8th.
Guy Walton...."The Climate Guy"
Lead Forecaster, the Weather Channel
