Denying The Neverending Heatwave: NASA, NOAA, JMA Show 2014 Broke New Records; But Will Republicans Ever Listen to Science?

If you are younger than 29 years old, you haven’t lived in a month that was cooler than the 20th century average. — Dr. Marshall Shepherd, former President of the American Meteorological Society

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Strong global temperature records typically show up in all the major climate monitors. And, despite no El Nino providing an added kick to atmospheric heating, that’s exactly what happened in 2014.

Respectively Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JMA), NASA and NOAA all showed 2014 as the hottest year in the global climate record. And the departures were all quite strong with JMA showing +0.63 C, NASA showing +0.68 C, and NOAA showing +0.69 C above the 20th Century average — all measures that put the world now in the range of +0.9 C warming since the 1880s.

Not only was this year the hottest on record for the global climate. It was one in many progressively hotter years and decades. The result being that if you were born in 1986, you haven’t experienced one month that has been cooler than the 20th Century average.

(Decadal and yearly warming since 1880 as recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s a brutal warming trend that has propelled us, in just 1 Century, into a time hotter than any in at least 5,000 years and probably 150,000 years. Continued warming at this pace will put us hotter than at any time in 1 million years before mid century and that is without any of the predicted acceleration due to amplifying feedbacks such as Arctic carbon release, loss of Arctic albedo due to snow and ice melt and greening, and loss of the oceans as a global carbon sink. Image source: NOAA and Climate Progress.)

It’s a set of validated evidence that is so obvious as to be incontrovertible.

And yet the climate games and silliness still occur with regularity in the public sphere. In the most recent republican witching hour congressional approval of the Keystone XL pipeline — a piece of infrastructure that will shackle the US to climate-wrecking carbon emissions for decades to come — Bernie Sanders submitted an amendment asking republicans to record their climate change denial for the public record. A denial a majority of republicans, including most major party heads, now attest to, despite what the science is obviously saying.

In an interview with the Guardian, Sanders noted:

“The bottom line is that I think as a nation that we walk down a very dangerous road when the majority party in the United States Congress is prepared to reject science. I think it is important for Republicans to tell their constituents, to tell the American people, and to tell the world whether they agree with the science or not.”

More notably, Senator Jim Inhofe, who currently sits as chairman of the environment and public works committee has publicly claimed that he believes climate change is a hoax. But what Inhofe doesn’t elaborate is why scientists who spend their lives in service to the public, and not to special interests, like the oil, gas and coal companies Inhofe often goes to bat for in Congress, would perpetrate such a hoax. Because if it is a hoax it is broad and all-encompassing — including every major atmospheric sciences body in the world today. In other words, if Inhofe believes NASA put a man on the moon, then why doesn’t he believe the same scientific body on the issue of climate change?

Climate Scientist Michael Mann gave his own very clear take of the new record today on Facebook. Mann noted that the current new record, especially when viewed in context of the fact that we currently see no El Nino but still hit annual heat records, can put to rest the recent false assertions that atmospheric warming has paused.

As ever, Mann provides a very clear assessment:

Based on the collective reports, it is therefore fair to declare 2014 the warmest year on record. This is significant for a number of reasons. Unlike past record years, 2014 broke the record without the “assist” of a large El Niño event. There was only the weakest semblance of an El Niño and tropical Pacific warmth contributed only moderately to the record 2014 global temperatures.

Viewed in context, the record temperatures underscore the undeniable fact that we are witnessing, before our eyes, the effects of human-caused climate change. It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be seeing a record year, during a record warm decade, during a multidecadal period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled over at least the past millennium, were it not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by fossil fuel burning.

The record temperatures *should* put to rest the absurd notion of a “pause” (what I refer to as the “Faux Pause” in Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by-2036/) in global warming.

There is a solid body of research now showing that any apparent slow-down of warming during the past decade was likely due to natural short-term factors (like small changes in solar output and volcanic activity) and internal fluctuations related to e.g. the El Nino phenomenon. The record 2014 temperatures underscore the fact that global warming and associated climate changes continue unabated as we continue to raise the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Mann was joined by lead NASA GISS scientist Gavin Schmidt who pointed out the inexorable global warming of ‘decades and decades.’ Schmidt noted that individual years rankings can be slung about through the forces of chaotic weather. But the trend, Schmidt asserted, was undeniable.

Dr. Schmidt’s research has been critical in understanding the role of both CO2 as the primary governing gas impacting global heating as well as the amplifying heat of additional greenhouse gasses. In the late 1990s and early 2000s Dr. Schmidt provided critical evidence highlighting the atmospheric warming impact of methane, for example.

NASA and Dr Schmidt provide their own brief on the issue which can be viewed here:

Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers, who is now engaged in cutting edge research on the issue of changes in the Jet Stream due to polar amplification, joins the litany of influential scientists in speaking out on the new record. Of the impact of the 2014 high heat mark she plainly states: “Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind.”

NOAA’s own global analysis this year comes with a near-endless list of record flood and drought events ongoing throughout 2014. I highly suggest you read the report. The language is dry, but the list of record events is staggering, even to someone like myself who is treated to these events on a daily basis. They’re exactly the kind of outlier events that are the upshot of meridional patterns, polar amplification, and the meandering Jet Streams identified by Dr. Francis. A list of extreme instances that propelled 2014 into another record-breaking year for natural disasters, according to Munich Re:

(List of natural disasters in number of instances per year as reported by Munich Re. Image source: Climate Progress.)

The evidence is there. All of it. For any thinking person. The public-serving, and often conservative in their assessments, scientists keep making their warnings again and again like a collective modern Jeremiah. And yet we have one political party whose leaders simply refuse to listen to either facts or even the most basic reason.

So in the face of such blantant and obvious denial of reality by the very people who are supposed to be responsibly leading our country, one must seriously consider the notion of running them out of office. Of stopping their legislative malpractice before it results in ever more serious trouble for us all. And not just for all the sakes of the scientists and those who believe them, but for the sake of the climate change deniers too.

Posted by robertscribbler on January 17, 2015

https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/denying-the-neverending-heatwave-nasa-noaa-jma-show-2014-broke-new-heat-records-will-republicans-ever-listen-to-science/