Extreme Temperature Diary- Saturday December 9th, 2023/Main Topic: The Climate Lottery- Winter 2023/2024 Contest

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The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: The Climate Lottery- Winter 2023/2024 Contest

Dear Diary. It’s time once again to play my seasonal game for educational purposes.

The Climate Lottery is a forecast contest free to play by giving your picks in an e-mail or in this post’s comment section. No prizes will be given out for the contest, which is for educational purposes only. The main purpose for the contest is to get climate change conscious people interested in National Center for Environmental Information climate products. The special account that I have set up for the contest is guywalton94@gmail.com. This time I will make a personal pick, following along with any players.

I’m getting all of my information for every Climate Lottery contest here, which I hope you will refer to often:

National Maps | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (noaa.gov)

The National Center for Environmental Information ranking numbers for average temperatures of the lower 48 states for Winter 2023/2024 will be posted on or shortly after January 8th, 2024, which will be the official “Climate Lottery” numbers of the contest. Any subsequent changes by NCEI after their initial posted rankings will not be valid for the contest…but those ranking numbers will change with time.

The winning Climate Lottery numbers for Fall 2023 (SEP, OCT, NOV) were 123/111/111 with a Power Ball number of 124 for the season, meaning that the Fall 2023 was the 6th warmest fall in recorded history for the lower 48 states in the United States.

Hello again to all weather and climate geeks out there. Fall 2023 turned out to be well above average, temperature wise, for most of the United States. If you wish to play “The Climate Lottery” pick one number between 1 and 129 (with 1 representing the coldest possible ranking and 129 being the highest possible ranking) for December, and between 1 and 130 (with 1 representing the coldest ranking and 130 being the highest ranking) for January and February). Also, pick a “Power Ball” or overall ranking number for the winter season as a whole between 1 and 129. The Power Ball ranking will serve as a tiebreaker for any close picks between contestants. Your picks are NCEI rankings for average temperatures across the lower 48 states. Because 2024 will be the 130th year that the National Center for Environmental Information has been ranking years since 1895, all months for 2024 will have a warmest ranking of 130. Likewise, the year 2023 had the highest ranking of 129

Please give your picks to Guywalton94@gmail.com or in the comments section at the end of this post before January 5th, 2024. If you wait until just before January 5th to make your picks, you can make an educated guess as to what the ranking for December will be and also have a heads-up guess for January.

The Power Ball (or overall National Center for Environment Information) number for Fall 2023 for the lower 48 states was 124, which was the 6th warmest ranking and sell above the average ranking of 64.5 for the lower 48 states. 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. 

Chances for an entire season of below average temperatures are becoming much less likely across the lower 48 states due to carbon pollution. The whole point of these posts is to demonstrate how skewed temperatures have become towards warmth due to climate change and to get people to look at NCEI data. Of course, as far as the globe goes, the larger an area that is compared to average, the more likely that area is to be above long-term averages. What has happened this decade is yet more proof of the Climate Lottery game being loaded for warmth in the United States. Balls coming out of the Climate Lottery hopper are likely to have high numbers. 

Here’s a breakdown of the National Climatic Center’s ranking numbers by state for Fall 2023, which was ranked as 6th warmest or 124th coldest (or a Powerball ranking of 124):

Warm conditions relative to average were widespread across United States. Only the state of South Carolina was near average.

The following is a breakdown of each month for Fall 2023. Each chart shows “Climate Lottery” numbers for each state (or rankings) from a scale of 1 to 129.

In September’s the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 123 (out of 129 through the year 2023): 

Fall started out very hot across the south-central U.S. with several states having their warmest Septembers on record. No one state had below average conditions. September was the warmest month relative to long term temperature averages for Fall 2023.

In October the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 111 (out of 129):

In October the warmest conditions relative to average shifted to the Northeast with no one state seeing below average conditions. Maine saw its warmest October on record.

In November the overall ranking for the lower 48 states was 111 (out of 129):

During November the warmest conditions relative to average were in the West and Central states. The East and South had near average temperatures.

The following are the rankings, so far, for individual months or “Climate Lottery number picks” from 2014-2023:

The average ranking for 2023 is 64.5 since the coldest ranking would be 1 and the hottest 129. I have color coded all well below average temperature rankings for this post at or below 54 blue and all those above temperature rankings at or above 74 red, with rankings + or – 10 from the mean value of 64 black for near average temperature rankings. With time, the rankings for each individual month, season and year will change as more data becomes available from NCEI. Also, for reference, the annual or “Mega Ball” numbers are shown on the chart. For example, the Mega Ball number for 2022 was 111, meaning that 2022 was the eighteenth warmest year on record for the lower 48 states. 

Seasonal or Power Ball rankings for winter are those for DEC/JAN/FEB, spring are MAR/APR/MAY, summer JUN/JUL/AUG, and fall SEP/OCT/NOV. Also, keep in mind that NCEI rankings for seasons are not merely an average of rankings of individual month of a season or year, as was the case for Fall 2023- 123/111/111 P.B. 124:

Notice that since the start of 2014 only one out of the last thirty-eight seasons have been below average or “blue.” Thirty-two out of the last thirty-nine seasons since 2014 have been “red” or above average. Fall 2023 definitely adds to our warm stats and was also colored red. Indeed, the Climate Lottery hopper is very much loaded for above average temperatures for the lower 48 states looking at recent history. Yes, the “Casino of Climate Averages” is cheating causing the “House of Warming” to win just about every season due to carbon pollution.

I hope that everyone will have a great, safe winter.

Guy Walton…”The Climate Guy”

Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is more new November 2023 climatology:

More news and notes from COP28:

Here is More Climate and Weather News from Saturday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More from the Weather Department:

More on the Environment and Nature:

More on Other Science and the Beauty of Earth and this Universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

One thought on “Extreme Temperature Diary- Saturday December 9th, 2023/Main Topic: The Climate Lottery- Winter 2023/2024 Contest”

  1. Don Sutherland’s Picks: 129 DEC 123 JAN 121 FEB Powerball 129

    Guy Walton’s Picks: 129 DEC 95 JAN 125 FEB Powerball 128

    Reply

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