Data Shows Japan’s Climate Less Extreme Over Past Century

tokyo winter japan

Though the media like to tell their audience that man-made climate change is leading to more extreme weather, the data don’t support it.

In fact, one could easily argue that Japan’s climate is more agreeable today.

By Kirye in Tokyo and Pierre Gosselin

No trend in long-term annual precipitation

Over the past 100 years, for example, annual precipitation has not trended in a particular direction over the long term, showing rather some cyclical attributes:

Data source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). 

If anything, precipitation has been rather steady for the better part of the past two decades and even resembles what was observed about 60 years ago, in the 1950s.

Note how the extremes in precipitation occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when most of the climate talks were about global cooling. But overall, there’s been no trend change in precipitation in Japan.

Typhoons trending downward modestly!

Typhoons forming, and those striking Japan, also show no worsening, as is otherwise often claimed by climate alarmists. What follows is a plot of typhoon landfalls for Japan and typhoons formed, since 1951:

Data: JMA here and here.

The data suggests the number of typhoons forming and those striking Japan has declined modestly over the past 70 years, which is in line with the trends for global tropical storms. So there’s nothing alarming happening.

Japan sea-level rise shows “no long-term trend”

Also, nothing dramatic is happening with regards to Japan and sea-level rise. This is the official conclusion of the JMA! Their site states:

A trend of sea level rise has been observed in Japanese coastal areas since the 1980s, but no long-term trend of rise is seen for the period from 1906 to 2018. Variations with 10- to 20-year periods (near-10-year variations) are seen for the period from 1906 to 2018.

Time-series representation of annual mean sea level values (1906 – 2018)
The 1981 – 2010 average is used as the normal.
Annual sea level anomaly time series (comma-separated value file: 3 KB)

The graph indicates annual mean sea level anomalies for each year averaged among the four tide gauge stations shown in the map on the left below for the period from 1906 to 1959, and among the four regions shown in the map on the right below for the period from 1960 onward.

The solid blue line represents the five-year running mean of annual sea level anomalies averaged among the four stations, while the solid red line represents the corresponding value for the four regions.

The dashed blue line represents the value at the four stations for the same period shown by the solid red line (from 1960 onward) for reference.”

Japan annual temps steady 80 years, before peculiar 1990 jump

Finally, we look at Japan’s mean annual temperature trend over the past 100 years. Though we see an overall rise – it had remained more or less steady for some 80 years, from 1918 to 1990.

But suddenly in 1990, the mean temperature jumped to a new plateau.

Data source: JMA.

Perhaps this may have in part been due to a change over to electronic measurement systems and urban heat island effect, along with station siting.

One thing can be ruled out: Any CO2 effect would not act so instantaneously.

Japan’s climate has not really worsened

Overall in terms of weather extremes, cold and storms, things in Japan have not gotten worse. In fact, one could easily argue things have tamed just a bit.

Read more at No Tricks Zone


PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.

Trackback from your site.

Comments (6)

  • Avatar

    Andy Rowlands

    |

    This is the kind of article I love, claims of nothing bad happening, with proofs to back them up. Excellent.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

      |

      Hi Andy,

      I do not like this article. I will only focus on the figure of the temperatures. As I believe you know, I consider the average temperature of a day to be meaningless because the measured temperature of a day could have a range of temperature oscillation of 20C or 0C and have the same average temperature. So you can imagine what I think about an average temperature of an year. Than, when one doesn’t even plot the calculated average temperature of a year in a figure, and instead plots the differences of these calculated average yearly from the calculated average value of a certain 30 year period of a 100 years of calculated averaged yearly temperatures, I must simply ask: If one insists upon plotting anomalies instead of calculated average yearly temperatures for 100 years of these average yearly temperatures, why not calculate the average of the 100 years of averaged yearly temperatures and then use this averaged value to calculate each year’s anomaly (difference)???

      Andy, because I trust your knowledge of things, I would really like to read your explanation of what to me is a mystery. Unless, it is that someone is trying to confuse other people.

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Andy Rowlands

        |

        I’m afraid Jerry I cannot help on this one. I can barely understand what you wrote let alone explain it! 🙂

        Reply

      • Avatar

        Jerry Krause

        |

        Hi Andy,

        You confirmed what I tried to accurately write to confuse anyone trying to get some understanding from the temperature figure.

        And now I see I really confused the issue because I was focused on the precipitation figure instead of the temperature one.

        Now that I’ve clarified my mistake I expect you will see how those 3 periods of several (many) of consecutive years where the anomalies are greater that the norm and were not included in the calculation which established the norm.

        It is harder to see how much the same practice might have distorted the temperature data.

        However, in the case of the temperatures, what plotting anomalies does is it totally hides the insignificance of the magnitude of even a degree C anomaly relative to the absolute temperature (T (K) = T(C) + 273) which must be used in the S-B Radiation Law.

        Have a good day, Jerry

        Reply

  • Avatar

    Anectodal Evidence

    |

    Easy to find a single case where. a single statistic is good, while throwing everything else out the window

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Andy Rowlands

      |

      Forgive me, what has been thrown out?

      Reply

Leave a comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Share via