Posted on 02/15/2007 6:35:24 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – It may be cold comfort during a frigid February, but last month was by far the hottest January ever.
The broken record was fueled by a waning El Niño and a gradually warming world, according to U.S. scientists who reported the data Thursday. Records on the planet's temperature have been kept since 1880.
Spurred on by unusually warm Siberia, Canada, northern Asia and Europe, the world's land areas were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January, according to the U.S. National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. That didn't just nudge past the old record set in 2002, but broke that mark by 0.81 degrees, which meteorologists said is a lot, since such records often are broken by hundredths of a degree at a time.
“That's pretty unusual for a record to be broken by that much,” said the data center's scientific services chief, David Easterling. “I was very surprised.”
The scientists went beyond their normal doublechecking and took the unusual step of running computer climate models “just to make sure that what we're seeing was real,” Easterling said.
It was.
“From one standpoint it is not unusual to have a new record because we've become accustomed to having records broken,” said Jay Lawrimore, climate monitoring branch chief. But January, he said, was a bigger jump than the world has seen in about 10 years.
The temperature of the world's land and water combined – the most effective measurement – was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, breaking the old record by more than one-quarter of a degree. Ocean temperatures alone didn't set a record.
In the Northern Hemisphere, land areas were 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal for January, breaking the old record by about three-quarters of a degree.
But the United States was about normal. The nation was 0.94 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for January, ranking only the 49th warmest since 1895.
The world's temperature record was driven by northern latitudes. Siberia was on average 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal. Eastern Europe had temperatures averaging 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Canada on average was more than 5 degrees warmer than normal.
Larger increases in temperature farther north, compared to mid-latitudes, is “sort of the global warming signal,” Easterling said. It is what climate scientists predict happens and will happen more frequently with global warming, according to an authoritative report by hundreds of climate scientists issued this month.
Meteorologists aren't blaming the warmer January on global warming alone, but they said the higher temperature was consistent with climate change.
Easterling said a weakening El Niño – a warming of the central Pacific Ocean that tends to cause changes in weather across the globe – was a factor, but not a big one. But Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said El Niño made big changes worldwide that added up.
Temperature records break regularly with global warming, Trenberth said, but “with a little bit of El Niño thrown in, you don't just break records, you smash records.”
As much of the United States already knows, February doesn't seem as unusually warm as January was.
“Even with global warming, you're not going to keep that cold air bottled up in Alaska and Canada forever,” Easterling said.
For that reason (hurricanes) I sure wish it would stick around longer! Please.
Arizona....BRRRRR!
"The scientists went beyond their normal doublechecking and took the unusual step of running computer climate models “just to make sure that what we're seeing was real,” Easterling said."
Yep, and all the exit polls showed that Gore should have won the election in 2000. Therefore it should be concluded that the votes were invalid, what was real was not real.......
"Why are most conservative anti-science?"
Show me the science.
"We're freezin' our arses off here in SE Michigan."
Nice to meet ya, neighbor.
Why believe an instrument that will give you a direct, unimpeachable reading when you can trust a computer model that can be tweaked until it tells you what you want to hear?
Not in the Midwest. What a bunch of bilge-water.
And this is a BAD thing? What - does Siberia want to be COLDER?
In the Northern Hemisphere, land areas were 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal for January, breaking the old record by about three-quarters of a degree.
Maybe it's just me - but if the land and sea temperatures COMBINED rose 1.53 degree and the land temperature alone rose 4.1 degrees - doesn't that mean that the ocean temperatures went DOWN 2.57 degrees?
Am I missing something here?
Why not? It's not like nobody'd ever heard of El Nino, it was a known variable. Consider how completely meaningless any of these "computer models" are if they can't take into account known variables which have so much of an impact.
I know AP has good sources, but "ever" is a long, long time. Since weather records have been kept for only a few hundred years at most and the earth is billions of years old, I'll have to take anything AP reports with the usual block of salt.
"Wait for the records on February!"
You'll never see them, or, somehow, the record cold won't be enough to compensate for the warmth, so it'll be a net gain. I've looked at the met. records, and that's how they do it. I don't trust how they compute things. Hell could freeze over, and somehow, that year would STILL be warmer than the last year.
I think you miss the point that El Nino's are highly unpredictable and that El Nino's do not originate in the atmosphere. Given how unpredictable El Nino's are, I think it would be highly irresponsible of the NHC to go out on a limb and tell people there will be no hurricanes in a given year due to an El Nino that may, and mostly likely, may not happen.
AS for the computer models, they are far from meaningless. The models can be extremely accurate and are fully capable of taking into account the effect of an El Nino. The problem is that these are computer models of atmospheric conditions. El Nino's do not originate in the atmosphere so an atmospheric model, by nature, cannot predict an El Nino happening. It can only predict the effects of the El Nino on the atmosphere.
NEWS FLASH!
ONE MONTH IT'S HOT!
NEXT MONTH IT'S COLD!
PROOF WE NEED TO BECOME SOCIALISTS RIGHT AWAY!
Wow, higher temperatures are consistent with warming. Amazing, the stuff you can figure out with a PhD.
I think it will stay relatively quiet here along our coastlines.
Kathmandu?
0.5:8.7=~4.1.
...is academic.
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