Are These the Faces of Climate Conspiracy?

Quick, look at this photo of NOAA National Climatic Data Center employees honored for developing a new standard to produce & preserve climate data records:

How would you best describe them?

• Nerds happy to labor in obscurity
• GLORY BOY MONEYGRUBBER CONSPIRACY MONGERS

Climate science deniers are weird people.

2012 Shatters Record for America's Hottest Spring

This just in from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

According to NOAA scientists, the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during May was 64.3°F, 3.3°F above the long-term average, making it the second warmest May on record. The month's high temperatures also contributed to the warmest spring, warmest year-to-date, and warmest 12-month period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895.

The spring season's (March-May) nationally averaged temperature was 57.1°F, 5.2°F above the 1901-2000 long-term average, surpassing the previous warmest spring (1910) by 2.0°F.

Data like this is why I don't use the term climate "skeptic." Who could rationally process America being five degrees above normal and shattering the record for hottest spring by two full degrees and think, "Meh, I'm not yet convinced"? This is what a climate crisis looks like, and if you can't accept that, you're denying reality.

January 2012: America's 4th-Warmest on Record

The DC area is on pace for its 3rd-warmest winter on record, but we're not the only region that's had a relatively balmy winter. It was America's 4th-warmest January on record:

The national average temperature in January was 36.3 degrees F, which is 5.5 degrees F above the long-term average and the warmest since 2006, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. The other warmer Januarys were in 1990 and 1953. The data is based on records dating back to 1895.

Nine states — Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming — had January temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. Florida and Washington were the only states in the lower 48 with temperatures near average, and no state was cooler than average. [...]

According to data from the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the average snow cover in January was 1 million square miles, which was 329,000 square miles below average. This marked the 3rd-smallest January snow cover extent in the 46-year period of record.

USA Today's article does not mention global warming in his write-up, despite the fact that 3 of America's 4 warmest Januarys have now come since 1990 and 2011 that the 9th-hottest year on record globally. Read more on the warm January at NOAA.gov.

I've compared man-made carbon pollution to a baseball player on steroids - turning a warm winter into a potential record breaker. The National Center for Atmospheric Research has a new video fleshing out the analogy:

 

Last Month Was America's 2nd-Hottest August On Record

The latest State of the Climate report is out from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. The top news:

• August of 2011 was the 2nd-hottest ever in the United States
• Globally, August was the 8th-hottest on record
• So far, 2011 is Earth's 11th-hottest year on record

On top of that, not only did Texas' June through August break the record for hottest three-month stretch for any state, but Oklahoma's June through August is #2 on the list. The Dust Bowl's been pushed to third - by more than a full degree.

What's the impact of that extreme heat, and with it extreme drought? As the Texas Forest Service put it, "No one on the face of this Earth has ever fought fires in these extreme conditions."

Watch how fast the winds of Tropical Storm Lee whipped one wildfire through Texas (in real time):



Might be time for climate science deniers to face reality.

Earth to Jim Webb

On the same day Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) announces he'll fight efforts to limit global warming pollution, NOAA announces the first 8 months of 2010 tied for the hottest on record.

New in the News: Hotter Heat and Stronger Storms

I'm heading out of town for work for a few days, but I'll try to keep the blog updated while I'm on the road!

Before I head to Dulles, I wanted to pass along a couple of really stunning climate stories that have gotten very little media attention.

The first is a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, "Greenhouse Gases Likely Drove Near-Record U.S. Warmth in 2006". The most disturbing nuggets:

The NOAA team also found that the probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth’s atmosphere. [...]

The annual average temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F above the 20th Century average and marked the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures. Each of the contiguous 48 states reported above-normal annual temperatures and, for the majority of states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895.

As if that wasn't shocking enough, now we have the twin powerhouses of Hurricanes Dean and Felix. Conservatives had been bragging that the until-now quiet hurricane season proved global warming must not be happening. This Jack Abramoff pal even went so far as to say, "A few more hurricanes seasons like these and Americans may begin clamoring for global warming."

Dean and Felix have quickly turned this season from one of "impotency" to a record-breaker:

MIAMI (AFP) — For the first time on record, two Atlantic hurricanes have made landfall at category five in the same year as Hurricane Felix slammed ashore Tuesday at the topmost intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, according to data from the US National Hurricane Center. [...]

Its landfall marked the first time two hurricanes hit land at the topmost category in the same year since a storm was first reliably recorded at that intensity in 1928.

Dean, this year's first hurricane, hit Mexico's Caribbean coast at category five on August 21. Its rampage through the Caribbean and Mexico left 30 people dead.

For some reason, the fact that two category five hurricanes have made landfall in the same season for the first time in recorded history isn't seen as an important fact in most of the storm coverage I've read. For example, it's not mentioned until the 24th paragraph of this story on the Washington Post's website.

How much longer will we ignore the signs of a climate in crisis? Why are only two Virginia representatives sponsoring climate action legislation in the U.S. House? What are Tom Davis and Frank Wolf waiting for? A category five to come up the Chesapeake Bay? Or to come ashore at Virginia Beach?