Forgive me while I laugh

Read the UPI "news" report below and then read the academic article it is based on. I will then have some comments on both

A U.S. study shows day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall around the planet.

Princeton University researchers say extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s.

These swings could have consequences for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers said in a release issued by the Ivy League school in New Jersey Tuesday.

Existing climate-change models have historically been based on monthly averages, an approach that hides variability, David Medvigy, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences, said.

"Monthly averages reflect a misty world that is a little rainy and cloudy every day. That is very different from the weather of our actual world, where some days are very sunny and dry," Medvigy said.

"Nobody has looked for these daily changes on a global scale. We usually think of climate change as an increase in mean global temperature and potentially more extreme conditions -- there's practically no discussion of day-to-day variability."

Analysis of erratic daily conditions such as frequent thunderstorms may be crucial to understanding factors shaping the climate and affecting the atmosphere, the researchers said.

SOURCE

Journal of Climate 2011 ; e-View
doi: 10.1175/2011JCLI4115.1

Trends in daily solar radiation and precipitation coefficients of variation since 1984

David Medvigya and Claudie Beaulieu

Abstract

This study investigates the possibility of changes in daily-scale solar radiation and precipitation variability. Coefficients of variation (CV) were computed for the daily downward surface solar radiation product from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and the daily precipitation product from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project. Regression analysis was used to identify trends in CV. Statistically significant changes in solar radiation variability were found for 35% of the globe, and particularly large increases were found for tropical Africa and the Maritime Continent. These increases in solar radiation variability were correlated with increases in precipitation variability and increases in deep convective cloud amount. The changes in high-frequency climate variability identified here have consequences for any process depending nonlinearly on climate, including solar energy production and terrestrial ecosystem photosynthesis. In order to assess these consequences, additional work is needed to understand how high-frequency climate variability will change in the coming decades.

The first thing to note here is that we are NOT dealing with a global phenomenon. Changes in cloud cover were observed for only one third of the globe. We are looking at local effects. And what did changes in cloud cover affect? Hold on to your hat for the amazing news: RAIN!

No mention of clouds affecting temperature. And that is the dog that did not bark. Cloud changes SHOULD have affected temperature. Why is the effect not reported? That the effect was COOLING, not the warming assumed by Warmists is the obvious conjecture. What a crock!

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).