Hot Times Continue: January 2019 Was Tied For Third Hottest

Once again in January, 2019 most of the world was seeing red.
The month was tied for the third warmest on record. 

If new data from NOAA is any indication, a cold snap in the Midwest during January was NOT a sign that climate change is a hoax, contrary to our Fearless Leader's assessement. 

For the world as a whole, data released today indicates January, 2019 was tied for the third warmest on record. Only 2016 and 2017 were warmer. The tie was with the January, 2007.

This latest monthly report from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information also said the ten warmest Januaries on Earth have all happened since 2002. Reliable records started around 1880.

The last time the world had a cooler than normal January was in 1976. This January, the only notably colder than normal area was central Canada.

Many areas experienced record or near record heat, including Australia, parts of South America, parts of northwestern and northeastern Asia, central Russia and much of Alaska.

Notably, President Trump tweeted in January suggesting that a brief, intense cold wave in the Midwest "proved" climate change doesn't exist. For the record, temperatures were overall near average for region during January.

True, the western half of the Lower 48 has been brutally cold in February so far, most of the world is trending warmer than average this month. Western Europe, much of Alaska and parts of the southeastern United States, in particular has been extremely warm for this time of year.

Despite the cold in parts of North America, I anticipate February will probably score in the Top 5 hottest on record. We'll find out when NOAA releases its next report in about a month.

A Supposedly "Colder" 2017 Turned Out To Be Globally Near Record Hot

Both NOAA and NASA made it official today.

Red planet? Global temperature map shows for 2017
almost the entire planet was warm. (pink and red depicts
warm. Blue is cool, grey is no data.)

Depending upon how you measure it, the year 2017 was either the second or third hottest year on record for Planet Earth.

I wouldn't quibble too much on whether it was actually second or third hottest. The difference in measurement comes out to a tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of a degree, and the data from both agencies is in strong agreement.

Both NASA and NOAA agree that Earth's five warmest years have all taken place since 2010. That's pretty damn recent history.

According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, 2017 ended up being the third hottest on record, behind 2016 and 2015.

What's most notable about the 2017 data is there was no El Nino last year. El Ninos tend to warm up the Earth's atmosphere. The combination of El Nino and human-caused global warming were the two biggest drivers making 2015 and 2016 the hottest.

The inference to this is that 2017 should have cooled down more than it did.

By the way, if you are under 41 years old, you've never seen a year globally that was at least a tiny bit cooler than the the 20th century average. Starting in 1978, each year has been warmer than normal.

Despite the chill in our tiny little corner of the globe here in the Northeast U.S. December, 2017 on a global basis was the fourth warmest on record, says NOAA.

There's still a La Nina going on, which tends to cool the Earth's atmosphere on the whole a little bit. So we'll see if 2018 continues a subtle global "cooling" trend, such as it is, or not.

Warm World Continued In October

Yearly global October temperatures from the
1880s to now. See a trend?

A strong cold front is sweeping past my house in northwestern Vermont this Sunday morning as I write this, and rain will soon change to snow showers.

It's going to be another chilly day, which has been the trend around here for the past couple of weeks.

However, the worldwide warmth seems to be continuing, at least as far as NOAA data from October is concerned.

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information put out their monthly report late last week and said October on a global scale was the fourth warmest on record.

What makes coming in at Number 4 rather than Number 1 is that we are settling into a La Nina pattern in the Pacific, which tends to cool the world a little bit. The opposite, El Nino, warms the eastern Pacific and tends to make the entire globe a bit warmer. The record hot years of 2015 and 2016 were generally El Nino, or at least neutral years.

So far, 2017 is the third warmest year on record, with only 2015 and 2016 being hotter.

Here in Vermont, we contributed our tiny bit to make October the third hottest global one on record. Vermont had, by far, its hottest October on record.

So far here in Vermont, November is running a little cooler than normal, but that obiously won't have much of an effect on the overall global temperature readings for the month.

Because of global warming, we are permanently having warmer than normal months on a global basis. The only question about November is how much warmer than average will it be, and will it be another top 10 warmest November?

We'll watch that report when it comes out in another month.

Carbon Emissions To Hit Record High This Year

Global carbon emissions are expected to rise this year
after three years of no growth, disappointing c
climate change activists

Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will reach a record high this year, according to news from the UN world climate summit ongoing now in Bonn, Germany.

Emissions had been flat for the past three years, which raised some hopes that the long decades long increase in carbon emissions had finally peaked. The carbon emissions are of course what is behind global warming.

As the Guardian points out, however, you can't read too, too much into one year. The increase this year was driven by an improved world economy. Increased industrial and economic output corresponds to increased carbon emissions.

Also, a piece of the problem was dry weather in China, which reduced hydroelectric power output. So  China resorted to fossil fuels to make up the difference.

Growing economic powers like China are emphasizing more renewable resources, like wind and solar, though coal and oil are still mainstays of China and the rest of the industrialized world.

The Guardian article reflected mixed reactions in the world of climate change watchers.

"The news that emissions are rising after the three-year hiatus is a giant leap backwards for humankind....Pushing the Earth closer to tipping points is deeply concerning. Emissions need to peak soon and approach zero by 2050," said Amy Luers, executive director of the global research initiative Future Earth.

Other officials said there's naturally going to be year to year fluctuations in carbon emissions. It's possible 2017 will turn out to be a blip in an otherwise steady or slowly falling carbon emissions trend. Who knows?

Global Hot Streak Continues: September Was Fourth Hottest

September, 2017 was the fourth warmest on record
for the Earth as a whole

It wasn't just us Vermonters who sweated their way through one of the hottest Septembers on record.

For the globe as a whole, September, 2017 was the fourth warmest on record, says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The only warmer Septembers were all very recent: 2014, 2015 and 2016.

That echoes what happened locally here in Vermont. The hottest Septembers on record in Burlington were 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Climatologists had expected 2017 to cool off slightly from the record global warmth of 2015 and 2016. So far it appears 2017 did cool, but barely. It's hardly noticeable. We're still on track for 2017 to be either the second or third warmest year on record for the Earth as a whole.

To me and many others, this is part of mounting evidence that global warming continues unabated, as if we needed more proof.

By the way, NOAA says this was the 24th consecutive September and 283rd consecutive month that Earth's land temperatures were about the 20th century average.

Also, there were two weather disasters in September that each caused at least a billion dollars in damage, says Dr. Jeff Masters in the Category 6 blog. Those disasters were Hurricanes Irma and Harvey. That makes 21 billion dollar disasters so far this year, which is about average for this point in the year.

Since then, Hurricane Maria and the recent northern California wildfires have happened and those are likely to also be disasters each costing more than a billion dollars.

Will Hurricanes Migrate North With Climate Change?

A woman photographs giant coastal waves in southern England
created by ex-hurricane Ophelia. Photo by Matt Cardy/
Getty Images

As expected, ex-hurricane Ophelia trashed Ireland with strong, damaging winds Monday, killing at least three people, unroofing buildings, tossing down countless trees and leaving more than 360,000 people with electricity.

Was Ophelia a rare one-off, just one of those storms that were still almost hurricanes by the time it reached Europe?  After all, this has happened before, with Debbie in 1961 being the most cited example.

However, there are indications that with global warming, hurricanes are drifting further and further north. These storms thrive on warm water. If warm water is further north, the logic goes, hurricanes would go further north, too.

This has implications for Europe, of course. If a storm retains hurricane status further north, then the storm's inevitable transition to non-tropical storm status would come further north. But that poleward shift means these storms would be stronger than they would be had they lost their tropical characteristics further south.

Is Europe due for a lot more Ophelias? The jury is out, but the signs are there. A 2014 University of Wisconsin study noted there has been a "pronounced poleward migration in the average latitude at which tropical cyclones have achieved their lifetime maximum intensity over the past 30 years."

If global warming brings tropical storms and hurricanes further north, that has implications for us New Englanders.

Of course, we are already sometimes hit by hurricanes and tropical storms - even major ones. The Great Hurricane of 1938 was Category 3 when it reached Long Island and New England, killing more than 600 people.

Even weaker tropical storms can wreak havoc. Just ask any Vermonter who had to deal with the flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.

Aftermath of the Great New England hurricane of 1938
in Connecticut. Will global warming drive more such
storms northward? More research is needed.

However, tropical storms and hurricanes, even ones that reach New England and southeastern Canada, usually weaken as they approach because the waters off the Northeast coast are cool. Remember, hurricanes need very warm water.

If ocean waters off the coasts of New England and Canada warm, perhaps this weakening trend in most northward moving tropical storms and hurricanes could lessen, creating more powerful storms for us.

Some studies suggest New England could be more prone to tropical storms and hurricanes in a warmer future, but more research is definitely needed to confirm this.

That future is not cast in stone. More research is needed. But it is something to consider.

Vermont Autumn Heat Wave Really Off The Rails

Heat alerts in Vermont in late September?
Weather is really off the rails once again. 

Either the National Weather Service office in South Burlington is off the rails or the weather is.

I think it's the weather that's really off the rails, as the NWS is usually pretty sane.

Here's the deal: At this time of year, we're usually getting frost advisories from the National Weather Service.

Heat alerts are fairly rare any time of year, but this is ridiculous. Those meteorologists in South Burlington this morning put out an advisory warning Vermonters of high heat indexes with a few degrees of 90 today through Tuesday.

Never seen that in late September before.

As of 1 p.m. in Burlington, Vermont this Sunday afternoon it was already 85 degrees, with a heat index of 87.

This is turning out to be one of those really unprecedented warm spells that are really extreme. It might not seem like it. After all, it is only going to be in the upper 80s to near 90. We've had that before.

But never this time of year. And never for four days in a row, like what is expected to happen over the next few days.

We've had a whole series of these weird spells in recent months and years. You might remember the day in February when it got up to 72 degrees in Burlington, which was a full ten degrees warmer than it had ever been that time of year.

Or Christmas Eve, 2015, when it was 70 degrees in Vermont, when we're supposed to have those nice powdery white yuletides.

Not every odd spell of weather is global warming. Sometimes, things just get weird. But despite the climate denialists, despite the fact I can't prove this hot spell was influenced by climate change, the fingerprints of global warming all over this stretch of hot weather.

Still Waiting In Vain For That Temporary Global Cool Down

Once again, July, 2017 featured near record high
global temperatures

Every month this year, I keep expecting global temperatures to fall short of the record and near record high levels we keep seeing over and over again.

As I've said several times, the combination of global warming and El Nino from late 2014 into the first half of 2016 boosted temperatures across the world to heights never seen in modern times.

This year was supposed to be a bit cooler from the start. Still abnormally warm, yes, but not ridiculous.

But month after month comes in within the top three hottest on record.

July, 2017 ended up coming in the hottest or second hottest on record for the world, depending on who you ask and who's measuring.

I usually go by NOAA, who declared July the second hottest global July on record. That's especially remarkable because the global heat hasn't waned at all even though El Nino ended a long time ago.

It's still possible we might cool off slightly during the rest of the year, but so far, 2017 is the second warmest year on record. Only 2016 was hotter.

It's been at least 32 years since the world has had a normal to cooler than normal year. This was the 41st July in a row that was warmer than normal.

Usually, the Arctic skews the warm data a little bit. The Arctic has been warming faster than elsewhere on the planet, and that factors into the high global temperatures, month after month.

But this July, the Arctic managed to be a tad cooler than it's been in recent years and decades, and we still squeaked out a near-record July. Notably, Summit, Greenland had the coldest July temperature on record for the Northern Hemisphere when they got down to 27 below. Brrrr!

There were plenty of pockets with extreme heat in July, however. Shanghai, China, with 24 million people, had an all time record high of 105 degrees in July.  Another city in China, Erbaoxiang (I've never heard of it, either)  had that country's all time hottest temperature for a populated area. It got up to 123 degrees.

Spain had its all time hottest temperature on record, too, when Montoro got up to 117 degrees.

In the United States, places as far apart as Death Valley and Barrow, on the northern tip of Alaska, had their hottest Julys on record. (As noted previously, here in Vermont, July was sort of coolish.)

We'll see if August cools off. I'm not counting on it, though.

Globally, This Year On Pace To Be Second Hottest Year On Record, Surprising Scientists

Most of the world was much warmer than normal,
again, in June. 

The first half of 2017 proved to be the second hottest on record for the globe as a whole, which has surprised a number of scientists.

This news comes after, according to NOAA,  the world had its third warmest June on record, which also is a bit stunning.

I say this because the world was supposed to temporarily cool a bit after a very strong El Nino helped boost worldwide temperatures to record high levels in 2015 and 2016.

El Nino tends to make worldwide temperatures hotter. Combined with global warming, a strong El Nino caused those record high temperatures.

El Nino is long gone, but global warming continues on. The consensus was this year would cool off. This year would still be very warm compared to historical averages, but not really that close to record territory.

So much for that idea.

Think Progress quoted noted climatologist Michael Mann thusly:

"As if it wasn't shocking enough to see three consecutive record-breaking years, in 2014, 2015 and 2016, for the first time on record..... we're now seeing near-record temperatures even in the absence of the El Nino 'assist' that previous record year benefitted from."

Mann said this latest NOAA report "is a reminder that climate change has not, despite the insistence of climate contrarians, 'paused' or even slowed down."

I guess Donald Trump got it wrong, then. Climate change is not a hoax perpetrated by China to demolish the U.S economy.

Worldwide, March Was The Second Hottest On Record, With An Ominous Asterisk

Most of the world was hotter than normal in March, 2017,
according to NOAA. It was the second warmest March
on record for the globe, only behind 2016

NOAA's National Centers For Environmental Information just released their monthly report on the world's climate, and hot times certainly continue.

March, 2017, on a global basis was the second hottest March on record, behind only 2016.

Here's the weird part, and it takes a bit of explanation:

Global temperatures rise when there's an El Nino. That's why the world set so many hot temperature records in 2015 and 2016. Global warming, combined with an El Nino, boosted temperatures, leading to those all-time records.

El Nino is long gone, though forecasters think it might re-emerge later this year. Things should have cooled off in 2017, and they really haven't.

The weird thing is this: March, 2017 was the first month on record that was at least one degree warmer than average at a time when no El Nino was happening. Records go back to the 1880s

As always in even very warm worldwide months, there were relative cool spots in March, mainly Alaska, much of Canada and New England, and to a lesser extent southeast Asia.

But many areas were mega-warm. Siberia was off-the-charts hot for March. Germany had its warmest March on record. Central Australia and the south-central United States also had a record warm March this year.

The first three months of 2017 combined were also the second hottest on record, bested only by the first three months of 2016.

The United States itself is going through a prolonged, unprecedented heat wave,

According to the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang:

"The latest one, two, three, four and five year periods - ending in March - ranked as the warmest in 122 years of record keeping for the Lower 48 states, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."

The Washington Post lists a series of freakishly hot spells in different regions of the country during this five year period. They include the 70 degree readings here in Vermont on Christmas Eve, 2015.

We here in Vermont have definitely been sharing in these bizarre warm spells. That includes the 72 degree temperatures in Burlington, Vermont in late February that shattered high temperature records for the month.

The year 2016 in Burlington had the most days of any year dating back to the 1880s with temperatures getting up to 80 degrees or higher.

If the climate in the United States were remaining near normal - which it clearly has not given the NOAA information from the Washington Post - the number of record highs and record lows in a given month or year would be roughly equal.

Just to cherry pick an example, February, 2017 in the United States logged 7,137 record highs and oly 173 record lows. Instead of a 1-1 ratio between highs and lows, it was a 41-1 ratio. Bizarre.

All this data is a boatload of new evidence, as if we needed it, that the climate is really off the rails locally, in the nation, and in the world.

Arctic Sea Ice Remains Totally Lame

This chart shows the departure from normal of
"freezing degree days" in the Arctic. It reflects how
much the accumulated amount of freezing in the winter
in the Arctic compares normal. The black line on the
left is this year, the other lines are previous years. 

This story has been cropping up repeatedly for more than a year now, and the fact this still has legs is frightening.

You've probably seen several posts in this here blog thingy in which we fret about a dearth of Arctic sea ice.

The problem is persisting just as strongly as a more than year long spell of incredible warmth in the Arctic.

Of course, we all know the warmer it is, the slower the pace of ice formation up there.

Weather patterns this winter have favored occasional intrusions of relatively warm air into the Arctic at a time of year the region is normally in a pitch dark deep freeze.

Temperatures during these spells have flirted with 32 degrees near the North Pole, which isn't great if you want to manufacture ice.

This week, weather forecasts indicate another big shot of super warm air to invade the area near the North Pole.

The Arctic and Antarctic are probably more prone than anywhere on Earth to wild, extreme shifts in weather and climate.

Most scientists are pretty sure that part of this series of super warm spells up there are natural variability. That means that weird warm spells are bound to happen from time to time, and sometimes they can last awhile. And cause a temporary decine in ice coverage at the top of the world.

But these repeated bouts of Arctic "warmth" haven't been observed this persistently and this frequently in modern records. The consensus is climate change is messing with things, making the extreme warm spells even more extreme, and the cold spells not as bad as they once were.

There probably will be temporary shifts in which the ice extent in the Arctic temporarily recovers somewhat. There's bound to be winters in which weather patterns favor more cold air - with or without climate change.

And there will be years in which the summer melt season is lackluster. (2016 was kind of like that. The spring started with record low sea ice extent, but the summer warmth in the Arctic was - meh! - so by the time September rolled around, the sea ice extent was no longer at a record low, but still damn close to it. )

Regardless, the Washington Post's Capitol Weather Gang reports scientists are stunned by the level of warmth and lack of ice this winter in the Arctic.

Capitol Weather Gang cites this:

"After studying the Arctic and its climate for three and a half decades, I have concluded that what has happened over the last year goes beyond even the extreme," wrote Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center," in an essay in Earth magazine.

As Serreze notes, part of what's going on in the Arctic is just random extreme weather events, always happened, always will. However, global warming is superimposed on these extremes, making them more out of line than ever observed before.

Unusual weather patterns that have prevented frigid high pressure systems from settling over the Arctic, combined with repeated storms that pumped in warm air from the south, are the immediate blame for this winter's excessive Arctic warmth.

Almost nobody expects this weather pattern to continue forever, so we're sure to get some winters in which Arctic sea ice recovers somewhat.

But the overall trend for the next few decades will be less and less sea ice up in the Arctic. Eventually - nobody is exactly sure when - the Arctic Ocean will be pretty much free of ice during the summer.

Which will screw up weather patterns all over the world, so we need to increasinglt expect the unexpected over the next years and decades where we live in the mid-latitudes.

The Arctic is not Vegas: What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.

Antarctic Sea Ice Is Having A Rough Year, Too

A mountain near the western coast of Antarctica with a fractured
ice shelf to the left of it on the water. Ice shelves
are deteriorating in Antarctica, and that could mean
more global sea level rises. 

We've been watching the Arctic sea ice extent off and on all year in this here blog thingy because it's been struggling along at record lows, or near record lows most of the time.

That's not good news, of course, because the sea ice up there has been diminishing for decades, thanks in large part to global warming. That ice loss, in turn, might screw up northern hemispheric weather patterns.

For the record, the Arctic sea ice minimum for the season did not set a record low as some people expected, but after a quick start to the re-freeze season up there in September, lots of warm air has pushed into the Arctic in October, so the re-freeze has slowed down to a disconcerting crawl. 

There's a chance, perversely, that the low sea ice extent might be partly responsible for changes in the jet stream that have brought occasionally brutally cold and snowy winters to parts of North America and western Europe.

And now, let's take a look at the Antarctic, where things this year are not going so great, either. Ice extent there is among the lowest on record, which is a switch because the overall trend has been for increased ice extent around the Antarctic in recent decades.

Oh sure, some of the outer ice shelves have been eroding dangerously, but the overall sea ice has expanded somewhat, thanks to atmospheric circulation changes that caused upwelling of colder water around Antarctica that have promoted more easily freezable waters, notes Bob Henson at Weather Underground. 

Also, summertime melt water has increased from the Antarctic continent, reducing the salinity of the ocean water around there, making it easier to freeze.

This year, though, brought another shift in the weather patterns around Antarctica. It might be a one year deal, but it did break down the ice at the bottom of the Earth, that's for sure.

It remains to be seen if this year's low Antarctic ice extent is a one year shot, or the beginning of a trend.

A more worrisome development around Antarctica is the stability of the ice shelves.

Warmer ocean water seems to be chewing up the undersides of ice shelves along the coasts of Antarctica. These ice shelves act as dams that keep glaciers in place, or at least slow them down so they move at, um, a glacial pace down Antarctic slopes.

In the past, there's been basically an equilibrium. Some glacial ice makes it to the ocean and melts, but new ice is manufactured in the cold Antarctic interior, so all was good.

Since the ice shelves are melting more, that opens the door for the glaciers to move faster, going off into the sea and eventually melting.

The ice that comes down from the land and ends up in the ocean to melt is bad, because that contributes to global sea level rises. The new ice manufacturing process in Antarctica's interior can't keep up with the ice loss created by the newly speedy glaciers.

The problem can keep escalating because the more ice at the bottom of the ice shelf melts, the more is exposed to the warmer ocean water, and the melting just rolls on.

Still, the melting might have recently slowed a little bit, at least temporarily. The most intense ice shelf melting in Antarctica seems to have occurred between 2002 and 2009, notes NPR.

Even so, the fear is the melting will continue and the ice shelves in coastal Antarctic waters will collapse entirely, and the glaciers will flow toward the sea in a gallop. A gallop by glacial standards anyway.

That, in turn would accelerate sea level rises.

So yeah, people in toasty Miami and countless other coastal locations ought to care about what's going on in Antarctica. 

Sixteen Month Stretch Of Record Global Heat Ends, Sort Of

By one measure at least, September, 2016 was not the hottest month on record for the entire earth.

September, 2016 was either the hottest or second hottest
month on record for the globe, depending on who's measuring.

If that's the case, September ended an incredible streak of 16 consecutive months that the world has seen record high temperatures.    

According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, September, 2016 was "only" the second warmest on record, just a few hundreds of a degree cooler than September, 2015.

Data from NASA, however, says September, 2016 was barely the warmest on record, just a smidge warmer than last year. Basically, it's a tie between the two Septembers. 

The end of the incredible worldwide record hot streak has long been expected, because global temperatures tend to peak during an El Nino and several months after an El Nino ends. 

There was a strong El Nino earlier this year, which has since faded away. El Nino, an unusual patch of very warm water that sometimes forms in the eastern Pacific, boosts worldwide temperature.

The recent El Nino, combined with global warming caused by greenhouse gases, created the record hot streak.

October, November and December, 2015 were off the charts hot worldwide, so the rest of this year probably won't see record high temperatures.

But given the super heated first eight months of 2016, this year will likely be the hottest on record.

Also, most scientists expect that, though the coming months are unlikely to be record hot, they will almost certainly much warmer than the long term average from the 20th century.

Global warming is here to stay, with or without El Ninos.  

Record Hot Times For Planet Earth For 12th Month In A Row

A red world: Global temperaturs were way abov
normal almost everywhere in April.  

NOAA confirmed yesterday that last month was the hottest April on record for Planet Earth.

Incredibly, it was the 12th consecutive month that the world has seen a hottest month, and 2016 is likely to go down as the warmest year on record for the globe.

Blame climate change, with an assist from El Nino for this literal hot mess.

Climate change is continuing to exert upward pressure on global temperatures and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

El Nino, the periodic warming of the eastern Pacific, puts a lot of extra heat into the air. The most added heat in the air lags the peak of El Nino by a few months, which explains why it's so hot. And why temperatures in the last year or so have spiked up way above the somewhat slower long term upward trend.

Each of the last seven months in NOAA's database, going back to the late 1800s, are the only ones that were a degree or more warmer than the long term average.

When you're looking at the globe as a whole, a few tenths of a degree above or below normal is remarkable. A full degree is incredible.

By the way, we haven't had a month that was even a smidge cooler than normal, if you take the Earth as  whole, since February, 1985. So if you're 31 years old or younger, you've never experienced a cooler than average month on the Globe.

Many of not most scientists are expecting global temperatures to cool slightly in the upcoming months and year or two as El Nino wanes.

So don't expect to keep hearing "warmest ever" phrases every month. But with underlying global warming continuing on, don't expect to ever harken back to the 1980s or before. I don't think we'll ever see a cooler than average month again, unless there's massive global volcanoes, huge asteroid hits or nuclear war or some other terrible thing.

The warmth in April was once again concentrated up in the Arctic.

Ice extent continues way below normal up there, which might set the stage for a record low ice extent come Septemeber. Whether or not that actually happens depends on summertime weather patterns at the top of the globe.

But the trend is there. It's also not helping that massive early season wildfires in Canada and Siberia are dropping bits of soot on some of the existing ice, which would hasten melting under summertime sun. (Dark objects like soot absorb the sun's heat. White ice reflects the heat more.)

Young people are always admonished to change the world. But we shouldn't be changing the world this way. Watch for more weather disasters, big climate disruptions and other expensive consequences of global warming coming to a planet near you.

Many Americans Don't Worry About Global Warming Because We've Been Enjoying It So Much

An ice skater in shorts and t-shirt enjoys record
Christmas week warmth in New York last December.
Photo from New York Daily News.  

I'll confess to a guilty pleasure.

Where I live in Vermont, we just came off the warmest winter on record.

I know it was bad for the winter sports industry, and if I don't like winter, I should just move to someplace warmer.

However, in many ways, I enjoyed this past winter more than I enjoy most winters.

I wasn't constantly struggling with layers of clothes, ski parkas, boots, etc. It didn't take an hour each morning to get dressed, start the truck and get to work.

I even got work done out in the gardens which is unheard of in Vermont.

I guess I was part of the crowd, judging from a new study I've seen discussed in the news lately.

It turns out at least in the United States, global warming has caused winters to warm up much more than summers.

Winters are generally easier, than the once were and summers aren't that much more unbearable than they used to be.

Despite the ever wilder storms and floods and such that keep pounding us Americans, in general, global warming has made the weather "nicer," at least in the opinions of many.  We tend to like milder winters and dislike hot, humid summers.

With winters warming faster than summer's, we broadly think the weather has gotten more pleasant in recent decades.

According to the Associated Press: 

"Americans are getting the wrong signal from year-round weather about whether they should be concerned about climate change," said study lead author Patrick Egan, a public policy professor at New York University. "They're getting the good parts and haven't had to pay the price of the bad part."

If you're totally selfish and don't care what's going on with climate change and its effects on people in other parts of the world, it's all good for us Americans, right?

Um, no, At least the climate scientists are saying no.

Here's the deal: Eventually, summer temperature rises are going to start catching up with the winter temperature increases.

That means in the coming decades, American summers will turn quite a bit hotter, and in many places, quite a bit more humid.

We humans tend to get cranky in such oppressive weather. Even worse, it's dangerous. You'll see more heat related deaths and illnesses, and diseases, most of them spread by bugs such as mosquitoes, will spread north into previously unaffected areas.

Plus, as climate change worsens, storms, floods, droughts and sea level rises will also screw up the lives of Americans, and the rest of the globe for that matter.

That totally sounds like not much fun.

Quoting from the AP again:

"America 'may have been lulled into a complacency when it comes to the impacts of climate change,' said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn't part of the study but called it a solid analysis."

Of course, our complacency over summer is because it's not all that hard to crank up the air conditioning. And if you have to go outside, it's still easier than going out in a blizzard.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how cranky we get if the summers start getting a lot hotter. And stormier. And droughtier.

Global Warming News Roundup: Missing Ice, Hot Satellites, New England Winters

Click on this graph to make it bigger and
easier to see. Arctic sea ice extent (light blue
line) has been mostly running at record
low levels so far this year.  

If you want global warming to reverse itself and things to start cooling off, this isn't going to be a blog post you want to read.

Things are still heating up dramatically, as the following roundup of climate news suggests.

Hot Arctic And Not Much Ice

As I reported earlier, the Arctic is having an incredibly warm winter.

New data released in the past week show that February continued the warm trend, with parts of the high Arctic as much as 29 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, something that's not been seen before.

Not surprisingly, Arctic sea ice was at record low levels during most of February, says the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

A bit of colder air in parts of the Arctic froze up some northern seas, so now the ice is about tied with a record low extent, rather than well below the previous record as it had been for most of February.

This winter continues - and at least temporarily accelerates - the decline in the amount of sea ice up there in recent decades.

As I've noted previously, record or near record low ice extent in February and March doesn't necessarily portend record low sea ice up there in the summer, when it matters the most, but it does make that more likely.

Weirder Winters Where We Live

Related to the lack of ice up in the Arctic is a new study on New England winters that bolsters the evidence that the declining ice up by the North Pole is changing weather patterns im the mid-latitudes where most of us live.

We in New England have noticed the winters have gotten pretty crazy. We've had warm, nearly snow-free ones like this year, and bitterly cold, horribly snowbound ones like last year.

According to the Alaska Dispatch News:

"Scientists studied isotopes in precipitation samples collected since 1968 at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. The water isotopes -- the varying atomic structure of the hydrogen and oxygen that make up water -- identifies the precipitation that falls there durig all and winter as originating from the warming Arctic."

Over time, there has been an increase in the proportion of the precipitation that originate from water molecules in the Arctic.  

A loss of Arctic sea ice might be affecting the
jet stream, which in turn seems to be
making New England winters more extreme,
either cold and snowy or warm and dry.

This suggests that as the ice in the Arctic melts, it influences the jet stream, giving it bigger bulges to the north and bigger dips to the south.

That means there's more likely to be unusual bursts of record warm air heading north toward the Arctic under the bulges, and a greater likelihood of blasts of air coming direct from the North Pole southward to places like New Hampshire.

The fact that more isotopes are coming from the Arctic means there's bigger gyrations in the jet stream, making it easier for Arctic air to plunge south, and presumably, warm air return north to the Arctic.  

The bigger the bulges and dips in the jet stream, the more extreme the temperatures, and the stronger the storm systems get. No wonder winters have been getting so weird.

This water isotope study does not prove that the jet stream is getting wavier and weirder, but it builds on previous studies that suggest the same thing, says the Alaska Dispatch News.  

Even The Satellites Are Saying It's Warm

Climatologists still largely regard surface-based temperature measurements as the best way to measure climate trends. Satellite measurements have been around for decades, but many scientists suggest these readings from satellites underestimate the amount the Earth has warmed.

However, the latest readings for February, as derived from satellites, are off-the-charts warm.

According to Slate, satellite measurements suggested that February set new heights in atmospheric warmth, only to be outdone by the opening couple of days in March.

The satellite readings showed the northern hemisphere, at least, was a full 2 degrees Celcius above normal. That level is a somewhat arbitrary threshhold in which scientists say the world is in deep trouble from global warming.

Of course, that 2 degrees Celcius danger level would have to be sustained over time. People unanimously believe this level of warmth in the northern hemisphere will end very soon. At least for now.

It's remarkable in that it's the first time such a departure above normal has been observed. It's probably the first time it's been that warm in the northern hemspher since human civilization began thousands of years ago, according to Slate.

If warming continues, we'll get to that 2 degree Celcius above normal warmth again, then more and more frequently, until it's always two degrees above normal.

It will be interesting to see what the land-based global temperature analysis will be for February. Those numbers I think are closer to reality. But I bet they'll show another record hot month for the planet.

The latest satellite data is bad news for climate science deniers like Ted Cruz.

The Republican presidential candidate has consistently said that satellite data shows no warming like surface based analysis has. He's not quite right. The satellite data shows warming, but not as steep a climb as data from land based thermometers have shown.

Now, even the satellite data is showng a big jump, at least for now.

The Global Warming Slowdown Is Over

The satellite data gives even more credence to the idea that global warming is accelerating, at least for now.

Global warming appears to have slowed in much of the 2000s, up to the year 2013. notes Climate Central. 

Some climate scientists and activists pooh-poohed the apparently slowdown in the rate of warming, saying it masked increasing heat content in the oceans.

Maybe, but the fact remains that the rate of global warming did, in fact, slow down, despite a few reports to the contrary.  NOAA, for instance, said the warming continued apace, with no slow down.

Climate change skeptics seized on the slowdown by calling it a hiatus, and claiming global warming was over.

That was incorrect, but so was claiming the easing in the rate of global warming didn't exist. It did exist.

"We shouldn't sweep the early 2000s warming slowdown under the rug," said Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann.

That's significant, coming from Mann, since he has been in the forefront of scientists warning about the consequences of climate change.

Global warming does not cancel out natural variability. Many influences can lower, or raise global temperatures. While increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would inevitably cause the heat to rise, those other natural processes can slow the rate of warming, or speed it up.

It appears that there was a natural cycle in the Pacific Ocean that increased trade winds, which in turn sank excess heat into the deep oceans, rather than letting it sit in the atmosphere. That meant the rate of warming in the lower atmosphere, where we live, kind of conked out as the 21st century opened, says Climate Central.

That natural cycle in the Pacific has pretty much moved on now. El Nino, another natural process, has apparently teamed up with the end of that Pacific cycle, means that global warming since the beginning of 2014 has accelerated to a rate faster than the average over the past few decades.

Which explains why we've been breaking global temperature records by large margins for the past couple of years.

The rate of global warming will continue to fluctuate. Nobody is sure how long the current really fast rate, which is going full steam, will continue. Will the inevitable end of El Nino, probably happening later this year, slow things down again? Or will temperatures keep racing upward and upward.

We'll have to wait and see.

Temperature measurements taken at the surface of the planet from 2001 to 2014 revealed a lull in the rate of global warming, sometimes called the “warming hiatus,” before spiking upward again. 2014 was the hottest year on record until the record was easily beaten in 2015.

Until 2009, scientists had little explanation for the phenomenon. By 2014, though, it was known that the slowdown was caused primarily by a phase in a slow-moving Pacific Ocean cycle, with fierce trade winds driving more heat than normal into ocean depths.

The slowdown at the planet’s surface coincided with a rise in temperatures in ocean depths, worsening sea-level rise.

“The temporary slowdown in no way implies that human-caused warming has ceased or slowed down,” Mann said. “It was temporarily masked by natural factors.”Several recent papers have called into question whether the surface warming slowdown was significant. Some of the disagreements boil down to semantics; others relate to interpretations of data.

Wednesday’s commentary lauded the advances in climate science that helped solve the mystery of the slowdown, while rebuking other scientists whose research has concluded that the slowdown was insignificant or unimportant.

“Given the intense political and public scrutiny that global climate change now receives, it has been imperative for scientists to provide a timely explanation of the warming slowdown,” wrote the 11 scientists, who are based in Canada, England, Australia and the U.S. “Despite recently voiced concerns, we believe this has largely been accomplished.”

One of the studies singled out in the commentary was produced by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists led by Thomas Karl, who directs the agency’s National Climatic Data Center.

Karl’s team believes some historical records of ocean temperatures are flawed, and they corrected them accordingly.  The result of that analysis led them to conclude in a paper published last year in Science that warming during the early 2000s was “far more similar” to the longer-term trends “than previously estimated.”

That surprise finding prompted Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, to aggressively push for access to the government scientist’s emails, part of an investigation that others have characterized as a witch hunt.

Smith has argued that the NOAA study was “expedited to fit” the Obama Administration’s “aggressive” climate policies — a claim the agency strongly denies.

Karl on Wednesday stood by his work, saying “there is no disagreement” that temperatures and warming rates vary between decades. “We showed that one could not claim that the long-term warming trend was significantly different from the shorter period,” he said.Wednesday’s commentary was a reminder that opposition to NOAA’s findings is not just from politicians and fossil fuel groups, but from researchers who are convinced that the warming slowdown was real — and worthy of a public conversation.

The new commentary included new analysis of temperature data that showed what the authors described as a “mismatch” between early-century rates of warming and rates projected by model simulations.

“We’re presenting results to support previous findings of reduced rates of surface warming,” said John Fyfe, a Canadian government climate scientist who coordinated publication of the commentary. “That essentially refutes the Karl et al. paper.”

Fyfe said he had “no doubt” that the commentary would be misused by climate science deniers, but that he had no hesitations about publishing it. “I don’t think we should be in the business of pandering to the climate deniers.”

Two other teams of scientists whose papers were critiqued in the commentary downplayed any differences in opinion, pointing to the consensus that global warming and natural variability both affected early-century surface temperatures.

“Their perspective is very much in line with our previously published work,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, one of four Stanford researchers who wrote a paper published last year in Climatic Change provocatively titled “Debunking the climate hiatus.” “Global warming has resulted in a long-term trend superimposed on natural climate variability.”

Another paper criticized in the commentary was published last year by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. In it, three scientists led by University of Bristol cognitive psychology professor Stephan Lewandowskyconcluded that “there is no evidence that identifies the recent period” of warming as “unique or particularly unusual.”

That paper argued against the use of the term “global warming hiatus,” or “pause,” which is sometimes used to describe the recent global warming slowdown.

Wednesday’s commentary agreed that recent temperature trends have been framed “in an unfortunate way,” suggesting that “reduced rate of warming” or “temporary slowdown” would better describe them.

Although Lewandowsky’s paper was singled out in Wednesday’s commentary, he said it fundamentally addressed different scholarly questions.

“As far as we’re concerned, there’s no discrepancy,” Lewandowsky said. “They share our view that warming never stopped, and we don't actually disagree at all.”

“We shouldn't sweep the early 2000s warming slowdown under the rug,” said Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann, one of 11 authors of the commentary published in Nature Climate Change.

BREAKING: NOAA Says January Was Ninth Consecutive Hottest Month On Record

Once again, last month the world set a record for
a hottest month on record. This time, January 2016
is the warmest January on record, says NOAA. 

The monthly, eagerly awaited NOAA climate summary for January is just out this morning, and, Surprise! Last month was the hottest January on record for the Earth.

Incredibly, it was also the ninth month in a row that was the hottest on record. As far as I can tell this is totally unprecedented.  

For the world's land and oceans, January, 2016 was 1.87 degrees above the 20th century average for the month. It surpassed the old January record by 0.29 degrees set in 2007, says NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information. 

Beating an old record by 0.29 degrees might not sound like much, but if you are looking at the entire Earth, breaking the record by that amount is a huge margin. In fact, NASA, in their own set of data, said earlier this week that January broke the record for a hottest month by the largest margin of any in their data set.

Today's NOAA data says the margin by which January broke the record is only the second greatest. THE greatest margin by which a record was broken was set a couple months ago, in December, 2015.

This January's heat was powered by the oceans, which were the hottest on record. Land-based temperature readings for January were "only" the second hottest on record.

This is ominious because its a sign that there's a lot of potential heat stored in the oceans that could, in the future, wreak even more havoc with the weather and climate.

It's true the record strong El Nino in recent months drives up both the world's average ocean temperature and air temperature. That's definitely contributing to this spate of record worldwide warmth in the past couple of years, but it certainly appears human caused global warming is a major driving factor in this, too.

Once El Nino fades, I imagine worldwide temperatures might temporarily settle back away from record setting values for awhile, but still run well above normal. Then, my guess is, in a few years, we'll start setting worldwide heat records again.

Some observers are saying that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, beating out 2015, which set the worldwide heat record by a large margin. 2015, in turn beat 2014 as the hottest year on record.

It remains to be seen if 2016 will be the hottest year on record, but it's off to a rip-roaring start in that category.

Hot Arctic Winter Raises Questions About Sea Ice Extent This Summer, And Global Warming

This chart shows how the Arctic ice extent has been decreasing
each January since reliable records began in 1979. Click on
the chart to make it bigger and easier to read.  

Last week I remarked at how odd it was at my northwestern Vermont house that in early February,  there was no snow on the ground, and I was digging up unfrozen soil to prepare a garden.

I'd never seen or done anything like that before.  

Well, it's just as odd up in the Arctic this winter.

Yeah, it's cold up there, but not nearly as cold as it usually is.  That Arctic warmth is the latest sign that Earth's climate is going off the rails. It's heating up, and we can't just blame El Nino.

The Arctic sea ice extent so far is running at record low levels for early February, thanks to an insanely warm Arctic winter so far.

Of course by warm winter in the Arctic, I still means it's frigid, but not nearly as frigid as it usually is.

There were 5.2 million square miles of ice covering the Arctic as of early February, which sounds like a lot. But that sets a new record for the least coverage on record this time of year.

Writing for Weather Underground, Bob Henson said the average January temperature between the latitude of 60 degrees north and the North Pole was just shy of one degree below zero.

Again, that's cold, but not even close to the previous record for warmest Arctic January, which was 5.1 degrees below zero in 2005.

Just to be clear, the Arctic is still fully capable of blasting us down here in the mid-latitudes with cold. In the next several days, the Northeast is expected to get its sharpest, coldest blast of Arctic air so far this winter.

Still, with the relative lack of winter cold, you can see why the Arctic didn't freeze up as much as usual.

Of course, the big question is what, if any effect the low level of ice in the Arctic now will have when the ice extent reaches its annual minimum around early September.

That's more significant, because the less ice there is in the summer, the more of a "positive feedback" loop you get with climate change.

Ice is mostly white, and reflects warm sunlight back to outer space. But the darker blue open water absorbs sunlight, heating the water more than if were ice covered. That would help continue the trend toward less and less ice, opening the Arctic ocean to more heat absorbing open water, etc. etc.

That's been a real trend, but it's been an uneven one.  Who know what this summer will be like? If it's cloudier and cooler up in the Arctic this summer than recent warm seasons, the ice won't melt so much and we won't get a record low sea ice extent, like we got in 2012.

Or, as Henson points out, it's nice and sunny and weather patterns favor winds coming from the south toward the Arctic then they wiil be a lot of melting.

SNOW FREE ALASKA

One area that is in, or at least near the Arctic is, of course, Alaska, and they're not exactly buried in snow.

Fairbansk did manage to have a fair amount of snow way back in September and October, but since then. practically nothing. Fairbanks only had 1.9 inches of snow between December 1 and February 1, the least for that period on record.

Fairbanks did manage to get 50 inches of snow between September 1 and November 30, making that period the fifth snowiest on record. But still, snowfall is below normal.

And temperatures are way above normal. Alaska had its fifth warmest January on record. February is off to a warm start, too, at least by Alaska standards, with temperatures running about five degrees warmer than normal.

High temperatures in Fairbanks for next week are forecast to be in the 20s, which is about 15 degrees above average.

A tropical vacation to Alaska, perhaps?

Another Monster Nor'Easter As Warm Oceans Fuel Storms Big Time

Big nor'easter off the coast this morning.
It's yet another in a parade of very intense
storms this winter.

Boy, that nor'easter lurking off the Carolina coast this morning looks like a monster. And it totally is.

It's a classic "bomb" meaning it intensified super fast, and it's now an enormous, intense storm packing hurricane force winds and flinging around lots of precipitation and lightning. 

A normal nor'easter in this position this one is this morning would be too far offshore to have an enormous impact on the coast. Maybe some wind, light snow, nasty ocean waves.

But this one is so huge, so intense, that is is having a big effect. Blizzard warnings are still up for much of Cape Cod and the Islands. Up to 18 inches of snow propelled by gusts over 60 mph are still expected there today.

Elsewhere in southeastern New England, a good six to 12 inches of snow will fall.  Blizzard alerts are up in parts of the Maritime Provinces in Canada, too.

Coastal flood alerts are up from South Carolina to New England.

This storm is yet another "over performer" and we've seen a number of them this year. By over performer, I mean the storms have been stronger and more intense than many initial forecasts, and they've been nastier than what you'd normally expect.

Think about it. That late January blizzard really clobbered the Mid-Atlantic states with up to 42 inches of snow and coastal storm surges that broke records in Delaware and southern New Jersey.

Just last Friday, a nor'easter intensified a lot more than some forecasters anticipated. Up to a foot of heavy, wet snow collapsed many trees and power lines.

Over in Great Britain, a series of winter storms since early December have brought catastrophic floods, very damaging winds and coastal surges. Another intense storm is hitting England today.

Is this series of storms just coincidences? I doubt it.

A lot of what's fueling these storms is unusually warm ocean waters, especially off the U.S. East Coast. (There is a cold patch up in the North Atlantic, but it's unclear how that's affecting storms.)

The warm water is conducive to extra evaporation, which means more moisture available to a storm. The contrast between the usual Arctic air masses that descend down from Canada into that warm ocean water increases, making nor'easters stronger as well,  says the Washington Post. 

All this tends to make storms more intense, both in terms of the amount of precipitation they drop, and in terms of how strong they get, and how windy they get.

The warm ocean water off the East Coast this winter is due in large part - but not solely - due to climate change scientists are saying, as noted in the Washington Post article.


There's already been an observed increase in the intensity of winter storms along and off the East Coast.

Says the Washingotn Post:

"Overall, notes the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the northern hemisphere has seen a trend toward more frequent and intense winter storms since 1950. So hs the United States.

According to a 2013 consensus report published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,  'the number of severe regional snowstorms that occurred since 1960 was more than twice the number that occurred during the preceding 60 years' in the United States."



I think as long as water temperatures in the western Atlantic stay warmer than normal this winter and early spring, the risk will remain for more strong storms.


Since ocean temperatures are generally on the long term increase due to global warming, I think we might need to get used to more intense nor'easters in the United States and Canada, and bigger blows in the UK and Europe as well.