Hot off the heels of a new global temperature record in 2014, January of 2015 hasn’t missed a beat. Global warmth still rages, as bestirred as a Shakespearean prince outraged at loss and betrayal of a once-constant and steady father.
The month, as many, many months preceding, continued to display a reckless accumulation of heat.
* * * *
According to NASA GISS, January was 0.75 C above the global 20th Century average, or about 0.95 C above 1880s levels. This departure is somewhat above previous second hottest year place-holders — 2002 and 2003 — which both showed an angry 0.71 C rise. It is, however, behind the record-holding January of 2007 which at 0.93 C above the 20th Century average remains the hottest month in the total global surface temperature measure. The first of many to make attempts on the 1 C departure level.
(Global Temperature anomaly map as provided by NASA GISS.)
Spatial assessment of hot and cold anomalies showed much of the world with hotter than normal temperatures. In the Northern Hemisphere, cooler temperatures were primarily confined to the Northeastern US, Eastern and Northeastern Canada, and a region through Baffin Bay, Eastern Hudson Bay, and the adjacent Canadian Archipelago. In Austral zones, the heat sink of the Southern Ocean continued to display resilience as near-Antarctic regions also showed slightly cooler than normal departures.
But these were the sole significant zones showing cooler than normal weather. In contrast, a broad belt ranging from the tropics through the sub-tropics showed +0.5 to 2 C temperature departures. But the Northern Hemisphere again showed the most significant heat with Northwestern North America, Asia and Europe all showing extreme temperature anomalies in the range of 2 C to 8.1 C above average.
Arctic amplification also reared over the Beaufort Sea and through the Northern Polar zone with heat anomalies in excess of 2 to 4 degrees C above average and with numerous days in which the entire Arctic displayed +3.5 C or higher departures.
(GISS zonal temperature anomalies.)
Zonal anomalies also revealed this trend with a region from 50 to 60 North Latitude showing temperature departures in the range of +2.8 C across the entire Latitudinal belt. Meanwhile, the region of 80 to 90 North was under nearly as strong a departure of +2.5 C above 20th Century averages for that zone. By contrast, the only zonal region with below average temperatures was beyond the 60 degrees South Latitude Line and averaged a rather minor departure of about -0.4 C.
Conditions in Context
The second hottest January on record comes after a Century-long warming trend in which temperaures have risen by an average of about 0.85 C above 1880s levels and about 1.1 C above a low point that occurred around 1910.
(Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index — GISS/NASA.)
This warming is about a 20 times faster pace than at the end of the last ice age. During that time, it took 10,000 years for the Earth to warm by about 4 degrees Celsius. Over a single Century, we have achieved the equivalent to 1/5 post ice age warming on top of 1880 levels. It is also worth noting that recent record warm years in 2014, 2010, and 2005 occurred absent the kind of very strong El Nino that occurred in 1998. Most notably, for 2014, no El Nino was declared at all.
Which shows that for the climate, there is something indeed rotten in Denmark — and everywhere else for that matter.
Links:
David Goldstein
/ February 17, 2015Thank you, Robert…a fellow climate nerd and I start checking for the previous month’s global temp dates around the time the JMA releases their data. Then comes NASA and then the apparent “paper of record”, the NOAA a few days later. At .85C warming, It starts to feel as if we are waiting for the next “milestone birthday” (a la 18, 21, 30, 40, 65, years-old, etc.)….I suppose that would be 1C warming over pre-industrial. Aside from that, it seems certain that we are waiting for some kind of disruptive climate event that is magnitudes greater that what we have already seen. If Sao Paolo truly runs out of potable water…that could get a bit “interesting”. Of course, if the California drought continues and deepens, that’ll draw far more attention.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015São Paulo is back above 8 percent for its largest reservoir.. That said, rainy season is coming to a close in a few weeks.
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Greg
/ February 18, 2015Robert, I have seen these numbers and take them as mendacious. The source is Sabespo which is the state water company that has been deliberately lying to Sao Paulo for some time now as, for example, the numbers they gave out below indicate (I have links for each of these numbers but don’t want this to sit in moderation):
May 15, 2014 – 8.2% – Reservoir level – 821.43 meters (4 ft above the gravity intake)
Sept 20, 2014 – 8.2% – Reservoir level – 816.82 meters (12 ft below the gravity intake)
Feb. 17, 2015 – 8.2% – Reservoir level – 813.00 meters (23 ft below the gravity intake)
The actual number appears right now to be slightly less than 6% which is a recovery from a low in January that was a little less than 4%. Not clear how much is due to rain and how much due to rapidly decreased water pressure and rolling shut offs that they still deny. Either way the situation is not improving. Even the New York Times has noticed!
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Cheers Greg and thanks for the detail. I think it’s fair to say there’s some minor improvement from January, but nowhere near enough as yet. Thanks for the Times link.
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015Thailand facing significant loss of rice crop due to drought.
The irrigation department has warned that the country would suffer its worst drought in more than a decade this year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/18/us-thailand-water-idUSKBN0LM0KS20150218
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015And the hits keep coming…
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015Intense New England Hurricanes Much More Numerous 340 to 1800 Years Ago
By: Jeff Masters , 6:43 PM GMT on February 17, 2015
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2918#commenttop
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Wondering about that meridional flow hugging the East Coast. That would not be a good pattern for hurricane season…
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015Previously tweeted. Interesting stuff.
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Planet In Distress
/ February 17, 2015Nice to see you back in the saddle, Robert.
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Spike
/ February 17, 2015“about 1.1 C above a low point that occurred around 1910”
Hadn’t noted that 1910 nadir before – so that’s 1C exceeded over the last hundred years. Very sobering.
Welcome back Robert – hope your batteries are fully recharged.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Most scientists, unlike climate change deniers, don’t cherry pick. But if they did, they’d be saying 1.1 C warming…
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015Agree can’t be gorging on forbidden fruit here! 😊
However if someone had asked me straight up “how much has it warmed over the last 100 years?”, which I imagine some folk might, well I wouldn’t have got that correct.
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wili
/ February 18, 2015Although, since that was a solar minimum and we’re in another one now, there would be _some_ rational for making a comparison between those two points.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015It’s worth mentioning in the proper context. I use 1880 as the non-cherry picked baseline which is the broader precedent. The 20th century average is, to my view, a moved goal post, as is the 1979-2000 average.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report
314 Species on the Brink
Shrinking and shifting ranges could imperil nearly half of U.S. birds within this century
http://climate.audubon.org/
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-g-yerman/birds-tell-an-urgent-clim_b_6689818.html Birds tell an urgent climate change message.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015This is disheartening and depressing to me. I have trouble writing these stories as I find them to be so terribly sad and invoking of stark loneliness. But there is outrage as well. One wonders how many birds those ‘bird killing wind farms’ would actually save? I mean a species can survive a stress to individuals, but it cannot survive the loss of habitat.
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climatehawk1
/ February 21, 2015Exactly right. Hunters, for example, kill ~100 million birds a year in the U.S., but that is seen as fine by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, because it is individuals being killed and not habitat being destroyed. Approx. 300,000 a year, or 1 for every 300 taken by hunters, die in collisions with wind turbines.
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dtlange
/ February 17, 2015Hi, Robert.
I add, that super resilient high we have been watching is still holding and is intrenched in the eastern Pacific (am looking for the most graphic example) — this as the jet stream looks bifurcated.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015It’s definitely enough to keep that California drought in effect. A couple of strong challenges to the ridge this winter, but time is now running out.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015Northern Argentina floods kill at least six in Cordoba
The river overflowed after 32cm (12.6in) fell in the space of 12 hours, trapping people in their cars.
Link
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015I’ve read similar stories about heavy precipitation in argentina quite a bit in recent years. One paper states:
“There was a remarkable increase in precipitation over most of subtropical Argentina, especially since 1960.This has favoured agriculture yields and the extension of crop lands into semiarid regions, but this increase also came with more frequent heavy rainfalls and consequent flooding of rural and urban areas.”
http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC316.html
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Mark from New England
/ February 17, 2015Robert,
Welcome back. We were about to send out a search party. Figured you may have decided to walk to Boston and gotten stuck in the 8 foot snow drifts 😉 I haven’t seen a winter this snowy and cold in central New England since 1995-96. I think this one is certainly colder.
Speaking of which, The Boston Globe’s contrarian columnist, Jeff Jacoby, recently penned this op-ed in which he basically states that measuring global mean temperature is basically impossible and fraught with subjective biases. If you can help me point out some of his logical and/or scientific fallacies, I’ll write another letter to the Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/01/29/global-temperature-what-does-that-even-mean/YBuZQuXqAB5dJYznrRyVKI/story.html
Thanks and welcome back!
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Robert In New Orleans
/ February 17, 2015Mark, this all the proof you need to present to Mr. Jacoby as anything else is a waste of your time.
http://s261.photobucket.com/user/colonelexe/media/global-warming-underwear.jpg.html
His editorials like those of most conservatives, are celebrations of ignorance and should be treated as such.
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Griffin
/ February 17, 2015Mark, he is borderline trolling with his editorials. His entire argument makes no sense. He claims to not know much about it, but he is OK with throwing out NASA’s statement about it being the hottest year. You don’t get to have it both ways. If he has data to prove NASA wrong, he needs to step up and show why, not just claim that there is vagaries and therefore the whole thing should be thrown out.
But he is not trying to make a valid argument. The fact that the ocean absorbs over 93% of the energy imbalance of the planet means that arguing over air temps is like arguing about how hard it is raining while our ship is sinking. I think he knows that, he is smarter than he writes, but he is working for the Globe and right now he doesn’t care if you love him or hate him, just click on the page so the boss see’s the hits on it.
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015Griffin, thanks. Jacoby’s op-eds on climate change just keep getting more bizarre. I do think he does this in part to see what sort of reaction he gets – egg on the ‘liberal elites’. Now does he believe his own propaganda?
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015With oil, coal, and gas prices all falling, with renewable energy adoption going up and up, I can sense a bit of desperation here. I mean, there’s only so many times you can throw the bulk of the global atmospheric, ocean, glacial, and climate sciences under the bus and not sound like a raving lunatic.
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015Certainly in the UK the industry are showing nervousness
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/18/fossil-fuel-industry-protests-over-risky-assets-warning-from-energy-secretary
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015And we had the absurd situation of UK contrarians arguing fraud in a Paraguayan weather station adjustment. Pretty desperate stuff.
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015Thanks, tweet scheduled on risky assets story. Telegraph story about the weather station adjustment was headlined something like “Biggest scientific scandal in history” and got a lot of play among denialati on Twitter.
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015And there is now this remarkable example.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/time-to-push-back-against-the-global-warming-nazis/
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Roy Spencer has been fighting the ‘global warming nazis,’ as he calls them, for decades now. So is this the new push, or the same old push using more violent and inciteful rhetoric? And I suppose climate scientists are nazis now? Roy should go back to promoting cigarrettes, it would be less harmful.
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015No reason to try to persuade Mr. Jacoby, every reason to use his baloney as the stimulus for a letter to the editor.
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015Reply to Spike – that Roy Spencer is a piece of work. This quote from his rant shows he doesn’t know his political science all that well: …”Like the Nazis, they are anti-capitalist.”
ANTI-capitalist? – the Nazi’s took capitalism to the extreme. They enjoyed the support of rich capitalists from around the world. But since they had the word ‘socialist’ in their name, they must have been leftists. Many on the right make this mistake.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015I find owning a home solar system, batteries, and an EV to be a shining example of the kind of individualism and independence from fetters that conservatives claim to celebrate. These guys fight the kind of independent spirit they claim to advance — supporting captive consumers and energy slaves everywhere. I think a good definition for them would be corporate Stalinistas — they push products that are harmful to life, health, and happiness. Products that are fostered on all forms of addition and removal of individual choice. That’s their freedom — freedom to give other people lung cancer, freedom to drown your cities and towns under climate change, freedom to murder species and possibly your children too.
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Robert In New Orleans
/ February 17, 2015Hola Roberto,
Como Esta?
Just a small suggestion for when you are absent during the future, please launch a new thread each week so that the comments (aka train of thought) don’t fly off the track.
Mucho gracias.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015Amen
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015RS-
I was worried you got hit by bus. You have great readership here now, I am amazed by the new names that pop up everyday.
This is important work here, don’t let suffer.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Sorry, guys. That post had 700+ comments which was pretty nuts.
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Ryan in New England
/ February 18, 2015I agree! Robert, I frequent this site for your original and accurate views on our current predicament. However, I also come here for the great links and knowledge provided the many great commenters. The combination of the two makes this a must-visit site. I agree that during long absences a blank post for new comments would be tremendously useful. Thanks for all you do!!
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wili
/ February 18, 2015Yeah, by the end it was freezing my screen every time I tried to access it.
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Griffin
/ February 17, 2015So many clicks, so much anticipation, so much scrolling through endless comments that are out of sequence…. WOOOOHOOOO!!! It was all worth it!! Great to see you back Robert and I must say that you have the best group of the most devoted followers who persevered despite the technical difficulties of the last post.
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Tom
/ February 17, 2015Hey, welcome back Robert! You didn’t miss much – everything’s gotten considerably worse since your hiatus to research and present this gem.
So now we have 2nd hottest January. February won’t be too far behind – record warmth out west and down south(west) will balance out record cold on the east coast. What do you think of the possibility that the “persistent ridge” that’s been giving CA fits for the last 4 years (i know, it’s been longer than that, but they didn’t have the huge, state-wide water shortage then) starts migrating across the country, slowly, like a decade or two over the bread-basket of the U.S. (CA to the far side of the Mississippi) before migrating to the east coast in 2030 or so.
i see that the Atlantic Meridional Undercurrent is slowing:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/abs/nature04385.html
That’s going to have consequences.
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bassman
/ February 18, 2015Tom, Feb is raging hot from everything I have looked at (GFS etc). It could easily be record warmest .80 or greater anomaly. I think the positive PDO and ENSO conditions have the biggest influence Dec-Feb giving 2015 a serious head start for warmest on record. Tamino had a great post on this a while ago. We will have to wait and see. If niño like conditions remain then it’s a near certainty.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015We have a somewhat warm Kelvin wave building as well. Those atmospheric temps for one day last week hit 1.2 C above 1880s. Pretty amazingly hot.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Have you noted the high T anomalies off the NE coast? + 8-11 C for a month running. Cold air displaced by warm Atlantic meridional flow into that zone and there you have your 8 feet of snow in Boston. But those T anomalies look like the Gulf Stream in a train wreck.
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Eric Thurston
/ February 18, 2015Michael Mann made some comments on this:
http://twitchy.com/2015/02/15/michael-mann-and-bill-nye-want-you-to-know-that-bostons-epic-snow-total-is-tied-to-global-warming/
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015Robert,
It seems to me that this *new* winter “Jennifer Francis (trademark) Jetstream” will be a fairly regular feature of New England winters for many years. I’d like your opinion on whether this pattern of extreme cold and heavy snow will likely persist for a few years. It may have a bearing on how much money we sink into repairing / retrofitting our low-sloping back roof! Thanks! Mark
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015That Mann is a sharp fellow.
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climatehawk1
/ February 21, 2015Indeed he is, and dedicated too. Too bad there are not 100 more like him.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Mark —
I think the entire region surrounding Greenland and the North Atlantic will be very, very unstable. This means more storms of many kinds through fall, winter, and spring primarily. The tendency of the cold air core to displace near Greenland would also lead to some more severe winters for the NE at least through the next 5 decades.
I wouldn’t bet on every winter being terrible. But considering the increased tendency for dipole anomalies, with the cold pole being shoved 1,500 miles or so south and east to near Greenland does lead to increased risk for very severe winter weather for the NE US, Eastern Canada, the Great Lakes Region, and France, England, Spain, Northwestern Africa, and Coastal Scandinavia.
When we look at both the cold dipole now over the Eastern half of North America and that Gulf Stream train wreck showing SST anomalies that are basically off the charts, I’d be remiss not to note that this is a mild example of what is likely to come once sea ice decays further and Greenland melt really gets underway.
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climatehawk1
/ February 21, 2015I’m reminded of the signs that appear on the Crawford Path, a trail that connects the peaks of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, which has extremely severe weather and where an experienced woman hiker froze to death just a few days ago. They say, in effect, if you’re standing at this point and the weather looks worrisome, turn back NOW, because the worst is yet to come. It’s always a little chilling to read them, even on sunny days. (A few yards–literally–from the summit of Mt. Washington, btw, there is a cross marking the spot where two hikers died of exposure during a storm in July.)
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015Robert,
Thanks for your reply concerning severe winters for the US northeast, etc. I’ll plan accordingly.
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015I see Mann tweeting that he’s so sick of winter in the NE he’s moving to Alaska.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015RS –
Get help from your readers. Ask them to post . Expand your world, be an editor . We’re here now, at least that is what I see.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 17, 2015It’s an army of eyes and ears .
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015I think I might need a guest blogger or two the next time I do speaking engagements… You still writing, Bob?
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John
/ February 17, 2015Reblogged this on jpratt27.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015I would remind everyone Dr. Jennifer Francis is right. This deep loop in the jet stream has been in place for weeks .
It has been stuck for weeks, And it is exactly what she forecast.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015And on the upstream of this they are moving the Iditarod, why ? The trail is rocks.
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015I hear ya! Absolutely – from one on the cold side of the trough.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015Right, and that massive high pressure is still in place off of the NA west coast. The two seem to work in tandem most of the time. The West is way too warm.
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wili
/ February 18, 2015And don’t forget the east side of the loop. Warm air has been pouring into the Atlantic side of the Arctic bringing temperatures in the areas north of Norway up to the 40’s F and causing a massive melt out on that side of the sea ice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmZkpURTJZs
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015Record breaking snow in Boston, but the Iditarod has the worst conditions ever.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Had a 2.3 C reading in Svalbard 2 days ago. We were -9 C in Gaithersburg the same day.
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james cole
/ February 18, 2015The climate change deniers have launched another media offensive the last few months. Print media have run a number of carefully crafted denial stories alleging rigging and revision of measurements. My self I only read the headlines and first couple sentences, I refuse to read past that. But these are more claims that official numbers are being fudged to show global warming where there is none. We all know this is the fossil fuel lobby putting lawyers, writers and quasi science writers to cherry pick and to misrepresent real science. We need to expect this offensive to continue and pick up strength. Lies will be written and published by the right wing media and the bought and paid for media.
On a more serious note, anyone care to comment on this written by Dmitry Orlov today:
” But the biggest surprise of the last few years has been the rate of arctic methane release. Perhaps you haven’t, but I’ve found it impossible to ignore all the scientists who have been ringing alarm bells on Arctic methane release. What they are calling the clathrate gun—which can release some 50 gigatons of methane in as little as a couple of decades—appears to have been fired in 2007 and now, just a few years later, the trend line in Arctic methane concentrations has become alarming. But we will need to wait for at least another two years to get an authoritative answer. Overall, the methane held in the clathrates is enough to exceed the global warming potential of all fossil fuels burned to date by a factor of between 4 and 40.”
He seems to be reading the worst case scenario into the latest research on methane.
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Robert In New Orleans
/ February 18, 2015Link please?!?! 🙂
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RWood
/ February 18, 2015http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/extinctextincterextinctest.html#more
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015I’ve seen quite a bit of denial in the editorials, op eds, and in between the lines. But it’s not getting the same play. Seems folks are wising up a bit.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015Every Mayan temple was covered for hundreds of years with a plaster made from limestone, made from the forest around them. You cook limestone to make lime. Lime makes plaster. Wood makes charcoal. Charcoal bakes limestone.
In the beginning this cycle ain’t a big deal, but these kings when crazy A cyclone was just a foot note at the end.
These people stuck sting ray barbs in their foreskins to get in touch with the Gods. And their queens did the same thing. You bled on a paper , then you lite it on fire. The smoke would take man’s message to the Gods.
Only kings and queens did this. Everyone else cut down trees , and hauled rocks.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015Jeremy Jackson’s Feb. 2015 talk at the US Naval War College is a good watch, and mostly about the human dilemmas involved.
Evening Lecture | Jeremy Jackson: Sea Level Rise is Dangerous
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wili
/ February 18, 2015Thanks for that. I have enjoyed the whole thing greatly. Well worth watching more than once. But do note that it was recorded Feb. 4, 2014.
Here’s something a bit more recent on the Navy and slr: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-pentagon-climate-change-how-climate-deniers-put-national-security-at-risk-20150212
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wili
/ February 18, 2015I might be wrong, though. He seems to refer to fairly current issues. So maybe it’s the 2014 date that is wrong? Anyway, note that at about minute 52 he says we’re committed to at least 3 degrees C, then at about 53 he says that many think it’s 4 degrees.
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Bill Waterhouse
/ February 18, 2015Terrific lecture. It was in 2015. You can tell when he shows a Jan 2015 NYT article.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015Science panel: NYC faces dramatic, costly climate change
Climate change is making New York City hotter, wetter and under worst-case scenarios could raise sea levels as much as six feet by the year 2100, a group of independent experts reported to City Hall.
The New York City Panel on Climate Change Tuesday released its 2015 update on how Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is working to keep communities resilient and bolster infrastructure in the face of climate change. The price tag of the city’s comprehensive resiliency plan — which is unfolding over many years — is about $20 billion, according to the mayor’s office. Much of it is already funded, including parts of the coastal protection efforts. Federal money is also helping foot the bill.
The de Blasio administration eyes reducing New York City’s greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050. Scientists blame global emissions as a key contributor to warming of the planet.
Mean temperatures are projected to increase by 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit to 5.7 degrees by the 2050s, and by 5.3 degrees to 8.8 degrees by the 2080s, the panel found. Experts warned that even fluctuations of a few degrees can have profound consequences for the region.
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/science-panel-nyc-faces-dramatic-costly-climate-change-1.9948984
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015Thanks, tweet scheduled.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015Stalagmite links rain reduction to industrial revolution
Research shows the explosion of fossil fuel use to power the 19th-century industrial boom began the pattern of lower rainfall affecting the northern tropics
Scientists have identified a human-induced cause of climate change. But this time it’s not carbon dioxide that’s the problem − it’s the factory and power station chimney pollutants that began to darken the skies during the industrial revolution.
Analysis of stalagmite samples taken from a cave in Belize, Central America, has revealed that aerosol emissions have led to a reduction of rainfall in the northern tropics during the 20th century.
http://www.eco-business.com/news/stalagmite-links-rain-reduction-industrial-revolution/
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Aerosols eat tropical cyclones by stealing energy from their outer circulation bands.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015Off topic –
Charley Rose is talking to an ex CIA guy tonight. Not once has he mentioned that the Saudi ‘s funded a virulent effort since Roosevelt to kill us. Our oil money all these years gave us ISIS. Now the genie is out of the bottle, and ISIS wants to kill the Saudi princes as well.
As long as they pumped oil , we turned a blind eye to the Wahhabi bullshit they exported.
Now, it may eat all of us.
Solar power does not have 1,400 years of baggage.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015I have never seen a solar farm explode , and dump waste into a river.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Have to agree with the solar farm sentiment wholeheartedly…
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015You’re right about the Saudis, CB.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015Yes — Saudi-American oil mafia, greedy and ruthless. Then there is the Bush-Saud symbiosis and the siring of Jeb Bush — for president.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015NPR is asking about rail cars tonight ,
It’s the roadbed fool . It’s the problem . Heavy trains, running over old old road beds , what could possibility go wrong ?
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015By the way , West Virginia hates government, let them clean up this mess a lone. Let them clean up every mess that is coming their way a lone. They can sue North Dakota, that’s where the oil came from , they hate government as well, or they can sue CSX , but private corporations never do anything wrong.
West Virginia hates government, let them clean up this mess a lone.
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Mark from New England
/ February 18, 2015Yes, and if Oklahoma suffers its worst drought since the 1930s, well, they should just pray as Senator Inhofe recommends. No federal disaster assistance for them!
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015That’s right. Most of American transportation infrastructure is crumbling as well — and we keep overloading it even as it crumbles.
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has severely strained our Interstate highways. The I-5 corridor and US Hwy 101 along the US west coast between Mexico and Canada are toxic air pollution zones that local jurisdictions are powerless to combat because (I believe) of the terms of NAFTA — but, as mobile sources of pollution, only the US Congress can control. If a stationary and single source was the cause of so much toxic pollution — be sure it would be stopped immediately.
That’s how our current public health and safety system operates. It’s a terrible and cruel system with the fossil fuel rabid Republican Party now in charge.
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RWood
/ February 18, 2015Larsen Shelf is predicted to calve, enormously — http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/9/861/2015/tcd-9-861-2015.html
and
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/data/125609-nasa-finds-19,500-square-miles-of-polar-ice-now-melts-into-the-oceans-each-year.html
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Hugh
/ February 18, 2015Look at the video by David Cowtan in
https://theconversation.com/global-warming-trend-unaffected-by-fiddling-with-temperature-data-37700 (about 1/2 way down)
Which goes into detail as to how you can do the calculations yourself on currently available climatic data ..
Have fun!
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Spike
/ February 18, 2015There’s a very long but fascinating article by the new Greek Finance Minister in today’s Guardian, written when he was an academic, on the problems of neoliberal capitalism. He brings up climate change as the biggest failure of that system:
“In his recent book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, the historian of economic thought, Philip Mirowski, has highlighted the neoliberals’ success in convincing a large array of people that markets are not just a useful means to an end but also an end in themselves. According to this view, while collective action and public institutions are never able to “get it right”, the unfettered operations of decentralised private interest are guaranteed to produce not only the right outcomes but also the right desires, character, ethos even. The best example of this form of neoliberal crassness is, of course, the debate on how to deal with climate change. Neoliberals have rushed in to argue that, if anything is to be done, it must take the form of creating a quasi-market for “bads” (eg an emissions trading scheme), since only markets “know” how to price goods and bads appropriately. To understand why such a quasi-market solution is bound to fail and, more importantly, where the motivation comes from for such “solutions”, one can do much worse than to become acquainted with the logic of capital accumulation that Marx outlined and the Polish economist Michal Kalecki adapted to a world ruled by networked oligopolies.”
Echoes of Jim Hansen’s deep skepticism on trading market mechanisms as promoted by so many who wish to financialise the response into a profit generating trade.
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Note that BP has a recent report out that is re-pushing carbon trading as a ‘free market solution’ to climate change. Of course it is no solution, which is why BP is pushing it. Any real solution would mean the end of oil and loss of BP assets.
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Julius Thijssen
/ February 18, 2015People keep forgetting about the delayed correlation between https://geovisualist.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/co2-emissions-growth-per-year.png and earth’s temperature. It pretty much means we’re already doomed to heat up, at least until peak CO2 emissions has been reached (which it has not) plus ~10 years. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-peak-heat-18394
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Kevin Jones
/ February 18, 2015Bienvenue chez vous, Robert! Thank you dtlange for Jeremy Jackson. Best one hour, nine minutes and thirty-three seconds I have ‘wasted’ in some time!
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015In second paragraph, I think you meant “display” instead of “displace.”
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robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2015Edit pending…
Fix in. Thanks for the feedback.
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Kevin Jones
/ February 18, 2015“displace” in the sense of ‘supersede’ works for me. Pedantry, not so much. (no offense intended)
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climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2015OK, well, only a modest amount of offense taken, then. I’m a writer too, and for me, it’s important for stuff to be correct, because it says I care about getting it right. If I’d been snotty about it, that would be pedantic, but I wasn’t. And “supersede” doesn’t really work in this instance. January didn’t supersede lots of heat …
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Kevin Jones
/ February 18, 2015Peace.
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Kevin Jones
/ February 18, 2015One thing I do with the GISS Global Land-Sea Temperature graph is look just at the coolest years (of my lifetime) 1950, 1964 and onward. Considering La Ninas, volcanos…. 11 year solar cycles…. aerosol parasols…thorough examination of the pathetic claims of manipulation of thermometers… Sure looks like a fantastically powerful forcing, to me, with fantastic consequences.
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wili
/ February 18, 2015A reminder that we’ve been warned for a long, long time–at least 50 years: https://www.skepticalscience.com/LBJ-climate-1965.html
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015I’m slowly (way too many photos) posting some atmospheric chemistry and toxic landscape illustrations to dtlange2.
Nitrogen Deposition As Atmospheric Precipitation and It’s effects on Trees on the Portland State University Campus — Feb, 2015
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dtlange
/ February 18, 2015The title of this news piece:
More Arctic air on its way to the Cape Fear region
As the Cape Fear region scraped away Tuesday morning’s storm, forecasters were already looking at a brief bout of snow today, followed by brutal cold into the weekend.
Several public school systems, including Cumberland County, closed Tuesday and again today. Fort Bragg was closed Tuesday. Area colleges, hospitals and businesses also altered schedules Tuesday and again today due to anticipated slick traveling conditions.
Fayetteville ended up with about 2/3 of an inch of frozen precipitation, mainly a combination of sleet and freezing rain. Downed trees, power outages – more than 25,000 in the region at one point Tuesday morning – and slick roads were the order of the day.
http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/more-artic-air-on-its-way-to-the-cape-fear/article_aac9c1ef-a613-5244-bb57-3bd00c7744c5.html
– But, the US/NA West, Southwest, and Northwest is way too warm. The continent is basically cleaved in half weather wise. It will likely sink, or swim, as such.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015Rising Sea Levels Are Already Making Miami’s Floods Worse
But the flooding is already happening in Florida. At the University of Miami’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Brian McNoldy and other researchers have been accumulating sea level data from Virginia Key (a small island just south of Miami Beach) since 1996. Over those nineteen years, sea levels around the Miami coast have already gone up 3.7 inches. In a post updated yesterday, McNoldy highlights three big problems that follow from those numbers—and they should worry all of us.
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/rising-sea-levels-already-making-miamis-floods-worse/
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2015This is a very rapid pace. 8 feet per century… Subsidence likely plays a part, as does the Gulf Stream backing up. But it can’t count for all.
If we start seeing similar acceleration in other locations, then we have a trend rather than just a disturbing outlier.
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Colorado Bob
/ February 18, 2015Study finds more evidence for link between wavy jet stream and extreme weather
Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis and colleagues link that wavy jet stream to a warming Arctic, where climate changes near the top of the world are happening faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes.
A new study from Francis and University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist Stephen Vavrus, published in IOPscience, backs up that theory, with evidence linking regional and seasonal conditions in the Arctic to deeper north-south jet stream waves which will lead to more extreme weather across the country.
“The real story is how persistent the pattern has been. It’s been this way nearly continually since December 2013…Warm in the west, cold in the east,” Francis said. “We think with the warming Arctic these types of very wavy patterns, although probably not in the same locations, will happen more often in the future.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-evidence-link-wavy-jet-stream.html#jCp
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Syd Bridges
/ February 19, 2015Welcome back and thanks for the post, Robert. I’m expecting the March ’14 to Feb ’15 average to be “somewhat interesting.” Also the rest of 2015 too, and I’m wondering whether we will see two back-to-back record years. All this deep heat in the oceans reminds me of John Wyndham’s “The Kraken Awakes.” I do not know when it will happen, but I’m certain it will. I don’t suppose we’ll see “pseudocoelentroates” launched by sea tanks as in the novel, but the sea rise will happen. It also reminds me of J G Ballard’s “The Drowned World.” Both are much better fiction than the denialist rubbish, but they contain far more truth too.
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robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2015Have to agree, Syd. February, so far, has been ridiculously warm. I will have to take a look at the novels you mention. Not yet in my library.
Every time I go back to visit my family down in Hampton Roads, the water seems higher. First Landing State Park is slowly flooding out. That was my boyhood playground…
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Kevin Jones
/ February 19, 2015Yes, Robert. Every time I go back to my childhood paradise of Admiral Peary’s Eagle Island, Casco Bay Maine, I find myself filled with self-doubt. Surely the tidal pools were not so splendid in their overflowing bio-diversity back in ’54-’55 as I tell myself I remember. Surely the shoreline wasn’t further out, low tide and high. Surely I am making up the remembrance of house sized rocks visible in their entirety through such clear water with their tops ten feet below the surface. And the wonderful diversity of sea birds. And the beyond words smell of that rich, wild place. And then I listen to Jeremy Jackson, at the US Navy War College of all places,(thanks again, dtlange) and realize I am not, because no one can be, making this stuff up. Except the poor lying bastards who dare not tell their kids the truth, because they don’t dare to tell themselves…..that they have spent their lives being wrong about everything.
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Kevin Jones
/ February 22, 2015wili: I read that report you directed us to from November, 1965. Thanks.
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