Earth Was Surprisingly Warm In February, Various Measurements Show

Parts of eastern Europe, northwestern Siberia and
Alaska were especially warm in February, 2017

The Earth's climate change fever continued in February, as the month turned out to be the second hottest February on record for the globe.

It was also the fourth warmest month of any on record, if you look at it in terms of how far above normal the temperatures were.  

January, 2017 was extraordinarily warm, too.

The year is young, but so far it's not going to plan.

This year - 2017 was - and in most quarters is - expected to break a trend of recent super hot years by being slightly cooler than the previous year or years.

The year 2014 was the world's hottest on record. That is until 2015, with beat that record. Whoops! No, 2016 beat the the previous year for warmest on record. That's three years in a row that broke the world's heat record.

Virtually all climate scientists expcct 2017 to be abnormally warm, due to climate change. However, a big El Nino from previous years has ended. El Ninos tend to heat the atmosphere of the Earth, making hot times hotter.

This year began with a weak El Nina, which tends to cool the atmosphere a tiny bit. So 207 was widely expected to cool off a tiny little bit.  Yet, we're still remaining hot.

And now, some experts think a new heat-boosting El Nino might be brewing later this year.

Long-range forecasters caution that the possibility of an El Nino is still very uncertain for later this year. It's particularly hard to predict these things this time of year.

However, if an El Nino does develop, it would give a boost to global temperatures, which would give 2017 a shot at being another record hot year.

Very iffy at this point, but within the realm of possibility.

As I noted the other day, this climate change news comes amid a United States government that is totally hostile to the science.

The United States can't go it alone in battling climate change, obviously, but we need to be part of the effort.

The Earth's climate keeps showing signs of really being off the rails. Time for the United States to once again be the leader in protecting the world's security.

In this case, nuclear missiles aren't the problem. It's the stuff coming out of our car tailpipes.













Bill Mahar said it best in his monologue Friday. The Trump administration is like a person whose car is breaking down and "solves" the problem by putting black tape over the Check Engine light.

Record High Wave: Another In A Zillion Weather Records

This is a ginormous wave on the coast of Portugal a couple
winters back, but it's not the biggest wave ever recorded
on Earth. AP photo via the Telegraph. 

When you look at the weather, there are a zillion different ways records can be broken.

We're all familiar with record high temperatures, record low temperatures, record rainfall, most snow ever.

You can also slice and dice weather phenomenon in so many different ways to uncover record this or record that.

Just last week, one of the coldest temperatures on record hit northern Maine. Not at the surface, where people live, but thousands of feet overhead above the Pine Street State.

With better technology and better observations and more eyes looking, we can see other records being set.

Recently, a world record was discovered for the world's tallest ocean wave. During a storm ion February, 4, 2013, a wave rose to 62.3 feet high somewhere between Iceland and Britain, the Telegraph in Britain reported. 

The wave was a little taller than the height of a six story building, and was measured by an automatic buoy.  I'm glad this particular wave didn't crash onshore anywhere.

The Telegraph says the North Atlantic in a region from just east of Canada to an area south of Iceland and west of Britain creates more huge waves than anywhere in the world.

Intense storms often form in this region, especially in the winter, so you can imagine how big waves can get there.

I imagine there have been other, bigger waves out in the open oceans, but we didn't have the measuring capability to find them. As measuring basically anything gets easier and easier, we'll find more and bigger records, and extremes in more esoteric subjects.

In the meantimes, I'd avoid any waves that are the height of a six-story building. It might be a bit painful.

Some Of The Measurements Of That Epic Jahuary Blizzard Was Wrong

Washington DC in January's epic blizzard  

We're on the cusp of May, so a lot of you don't want me talking about snow, but I'm going to anyway.

To my Vermont readers, relax. There is a bunch of precipitation in the forecast, but unlike last week, anything that comes out of the sky Sunday and Monday will be rain. Not snow.

Except for a possible few snowflakes Sunday morning in north central and northeast Vermont.

You can never be free of snow in Vermont, it seems.

Hey you, over in western Nebraska! Sorry about that winter storm warning you're experiencing this morning.

Actually, the snow I'm talking about today is the long-ago melted piles left by an epic January 23 blizzard in the Middle Atlantic states that crippled the region.

The National Weather Service has re-examined some of the measurements, which in turn adjusts some of the records that might or might not have been set, reports the Associated Press

The adjustments, which I'll get into in a minute, highlight the difficulty of measuring snow. It blows around, compacts, drifts, moves.

You'll always get these precise measurements from snowstorms. "Hey, that storm dropped 19.1 inches of snow!" Really, the best you can do is say you got about 20 inches in that situation.

But, the National Weather Service likes precision, which is a good thing. And they have standards on how to measure snow, so at least there's consistency in the methodology.

To properly measure snow, the National Weather Service says to let it accumulate on two foot square white boards, and take measurements once every six hours to get an official snow total.

New York City's Central Park now has a new record for biggest snowstorm on record. Initially, Central Park reported 26.8 inches of new snow during the blizzard, which fell short of the largest snowstorm record.

But it turns out 27.5 inches fell, so it WAS the largest snowstorm. Congrats New York!

The New York error came because of a miscommunication between Central Park Conservancy staff, who correctly measured the snow, and the National Weather Service New York staff, according to the AP.

Newark, New Jersey reported more snow than they actually got. During the blizzard, they recorded 28.1 inches. But they measured the snow every hour, not once every six hours. That didn't allow for normal compaction of the snow, so their method inflated the actual total.

It turns out they've probably been measuring the snow incorrectly in Newark since 1996. People there have since been retrained.

Another snow total that was looked at was at the Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. They measured 17.8 inches during the storm.

People questioned that, because some nearby areas received far more snow. Adding to the questions, was the person who was measuring the snow temporarily lost where the boards were because the snow was so deep, says the Associated Press

But an investigation revealed that the person taking the measurements managed to get it right, so the 17.8 inches stands.

They're going to recommend adding yellow flags to measuring sites so that they can be found in deep snow.

Let's just hope we won't have to measure snow until late next fall or winter!