2005 Will Probably be Warmest on Record

Nilmat writes "A Washington Post Article notes that 2005 will probably have the highest mean global temperature of any year since the advent of systematic temperature records. At the moment, the mean temperature is about 0.75 degrees C above the global mean from 1950 to 1990, approximately .04 degrees higher than 1998, the year of the previous record. Only something dramatic, such as a major volcanic eruption, could cause enough cooling to miss setting a new record."

Re:What?

[CyricZ]

The soot, ash and other debris blocks out some of the energy from the sun.

Re:What?

[temojen]

Fine ash particulates in the atmosphere reflect solar radiation (light and heat) back into space.

let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to say that running out of oil will cause global catastrope long before global warming will. I do believe we will see ice caps melting, seas rising, and coastal flooding in the next 100 years, but by then the world's population will be down to about 50-100 million, and we can all just move to higher ground.

Re:Let me be the first troll to say

[Simon Brooke]

This can cause more good than harm.

There's a ton of arible land in the world that does not have the absolutely-perfect-ideal climate.

Many cold areas - siberia, canada - may become nice temerate regions.

Suppose the temperate band moves 5 degrees towards the poles, what happens? Would there be the same amount of arable land, or more, or less? Hint: the world is round like a ball. The further north you go from the equator, the less the diameter is, and consequently the less surface there is per degree. Furthermore, most of the current temperate zone was under broadleaved woodland for thousands of years before the coming of agriculture, and we're still using the depth of fertile soil laid down in thousands of years of leaf-fall. But the current tundras have been tundras for thousands of years, and don't have any great depth of soil fertility. So it does matter if the temperate belt shifts five degrees towards the poles.

The Weather Makers

[tarvo]

Read this book The Weather Makers [amazon.com] by Tim Flannery [wikipedia.org], if you are genuinely interested in doing something about climate chnage.

It is brilliant and timely call to action for everyone to reconsider their energy use as it applies to C02 emmissions.

Re:The real question is

[blamanj]

Check out these maps [pbs.org] to see how the coastlines would change (and have changed since the last ice age).

No, the Canadian Rockies aren't threatened, but Florida would be about 1/3 under water if the West Antarctic ice sheet melted, and about 90% underwater if the East sheet melted as well.

Re:too early to call

[nagora]

isn't "global warming" supposed to cause extreme temperatures in BOTH directions

Only at a local level, these figures are global.

so how can anyone predict the weather for the next 2 1/2 months based on historical records and in face of supposedly dramatic climate changes...

The figures are global and also average, so it is possible to calculate ahead how cold things would have to get to reduce the "total" temperature and say whether or not that is likely. If the world record for an average score at some game was, say 9.5 over a 10 game season, and after 8 games a player had scored a total of 90 points, you'd feel pretty confident in saying that a record was coming, regardless of the fact that the last two games haven't been played.

TWW

Recent demonstration of global warming

[ManufacturedMirth]

Myth 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
Fact: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures.

No, that's not true at all. All terrestrial measurements have shown a steady increase - the satellite measurements were the exceptions, and showed a much slower increase in temperature.

Until last year, fossil fuel advocates pointed to the satellite measurements as refutation of the warming trend. Then, a bunch of clever guys realised that the problem was that the satellite measurements were taking an average of a rapidly heating troposphere (where we live) and a cooler upper section of the atmosphere.

There's a great discussion of this in the rather frightening book The Weather Makers by Australian scientist Tim Flannery, which is due for release in the US about now.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Spy der Mann]

I'd rather listen to a scientist than to a "friend" of science.

It seems very suspicious than an organization could be dedicated EXCLUSIVELY to deny claims about global warming.

Plus, why is it called with such an emotionally moving name like "friends of science"?

I searched google, and the only references to friendsofscience.org were forums inside that same site. Plus, I checked the hosting company, and it's "reveal.ca", a BUSINESS SEARCH company.

Can you spell "Astroturfing"?

Look, it's MORE THAN OBVIOUS that companies will lose A LOT OF MONEY if the U.S. abides by the Kyoto Protocol. Don't you think that they will start creating phantom organisations to dismiss the idea of global warming?

Look, we all know what companies like Microsoft are capable of. You think companies that produce huge emissions of CO2 and other pollutants wouldn't do ANYTHING to keep earning money?

I'm sorry but you seem to naive to believe the "friends of science".

Re:Let me be the first troll to say

[jcochran]

Record highs?

Hmm. I don't think so.

After all, they're still finding Viking farms under the ice in Greenland.
I suspect that we have people looking at short term changes and ignoring the geological evidence about cyclic changes in world temperatures.

As another data point look at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_snow_011206-1.html [space.com]

Somehow, I don't think what man is doing on Earth has much of an effect on Mars.

Some Info on William O'Keefe...

[mjbkinx]

...but first, a link to this [nwsource.com] article.

The promised information about him is here [exxonsecrets.org]:

President, George C. Marshall Institute.

Adjunct Scholar, Competitive Enterprise Institute. Member, CEI Board of Directors. President and Founder, Solutions Consulting. President Emeritus, Global Climate Coalition. President, Solutions Consulting, Inc. Former Senior Vice President, Jellinek, Schwartz and Conolly, Inc. Chief Administrative Officer, Center for Naval Analyses.

According to federal lobbying records, O'Keef e was a paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil, 2001, 2002 and 2003 on the issues of environment and climate change, with contacts with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He writes frequently about climate change in his presidentail role at the George C. Marshall Institute.

O'Keefe has a long history of involvement with the fossil fuel industry. O'Keefe also served as Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, a position he held until 2000.

...and on some of the organisations he works for:

Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $1,645,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. [exxonsecrets.org]
George C. Marshall Institute has received $515,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. [exxonsecrets.org]
American Petroleum Institute [exxonsecrets.org]
Currently "deactivated", the Global Climate Coalition was "A coalition of companies and trade associations seeking to present the views of industry in the global warming debate." [exxonsecrets.org]

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Stephan Schulz]

If they are "friends of science", they maybe should read some current papers - and maybe not quote old ones out of context. As far as "Myth 1" is concerned, it is true that there has been (and to a small degree still is) a discrepancy between surface temperature and climate models on the one side, and balloon and satellite data on the other hand. However, recent publications have very nearly closed that gap. It turned out that the satellite data suffered from undetected orbital drift (i.e. the satellites reported night time temperatures as day time temperatures) and the balloons suffer from a number of sensor and calibration problems. If the data is corrected for these errors, there is a rather good fit with current climate models.

"Myth 4" is another mixture of truth and falsehood. Yes, water vapour is a greenhouse gas. However, relative humidity is more or less a constant in the atmosphere. Thus, the amount of water vapour (absolute humidity) is driven by the temperature. In this way water vapour increases the effect of any other heating - its an amplifier, but not a cause of global warming.

If you look over the site, you find more gems. "Myth 6", for example, not-cites the 1996 IPCC report, totally ignoring the current (2001) and upcoming reports.

Wikipedia has a reasonable good set of articles on global warming [wikipedia.org].

Re:Let me be the first troll to say

[Lars T.]

So we are looking at 0.42mm a year, due to glacial melt. To reach the claimed 80 Meters of sea level rise that is bandied about for all the claims of coastal flooding it would take 190,000 years to reach that level, since your worried about warming to increase, let's halve that to 95,000 years.

Jebus Griste, did you even read the page you just linked to?

Over the past 100 years, sea level has risen by 1.0 to 2.5 millimeters per year; thus the contribution from melting small glaciers would be approximately 20 to 30 percent of the total. Climate models based on the current rate of increase in greenhouse gases, however, indicate that sea level will rise at a rate of about two to five times the current rate over the next 100 years from the combined effect of ocean thermal expansion and increased glacier melt

Re:Science is hard

[Abies Bracteata]

On the other hand, we have data that all of the inner planets are now heating up. The Twin MER rover teams were shocked at how warm the Martian winter was this year on Mars. They never expected their rovers to make it through the winter, yet both survived without a problem. In just the 30 years since the Viking missions, the temperature of Mars has increased substantially. In fact, it's done so by very nearly the exact same percentage as the temperatures seen on Earth. Similar remote measurements of Venus have shown the same increase.

Oh gawwddd, not this recycled right-wing drivel again.......

(From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192#more-19 2 [realclimate.org])

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth...

Re:Can't read....

[halofan_sd]

So tell me again, what is the "political motivation" of those climatologists who believe in global warming?

- - - - -

How about the billions of dollars in "global warming" research grant?

http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-07-04.html [cato.org]

Re:It's getting pretty hot on mars too!

[uncadonna]

This is addressed at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192 [realclimate.org]

Re:Can't read....

[ungerware]

Columbus? What was he "correct" about? The earth being round? Everyone knew that then. The myth that there was any common perception in 1492 that the earth was flat was created by Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus, written centuries later. (source: James Leowen, "Everything You've Been Taught is Wrong" -- great book, BTW)

Re:Science is hard

[Abies Bracteata]

Yes, it *is* in use in Africa and other areas. It is sprayed on the interior walls of buildings where it is most effective in killing malaria mosquitos -- without the indiscriminant broadcast use that would drive the evolution of resistant mosquitos.. Agricultural use has been banned, but that goes to the benefit of malaria control. Without the evolution of resistance resulting from widespread, indiscriminant agricultural DDT use, DDT-based malaria mosquito control remains effective. More info can be found at http://www.timlambert.org/ [timlambert.org]

Critical Analysis

[yup2000]

The graph in the times shows 145 years of data, and the average it uses is a 30 year average from 1961 - 1990. Never mind that they can't count. Why doesn't the graph use a 145 year average? The warmest years on the graph are 1990 to present. It is interesting that according to the graph, 1960 - 1980 recorded more cool years than warm!

again, reading the graph, from 1880 - 1910, there was a warming period that was even more significant than the one currently observed. Why?

From 1910 - 1940, there was a very significant decrease in temperateure. Why?

So, from 1880 - 1910 I'm sure everyone was afraid of the next heat wave
and from 1910 - 1940, there was an ice age headed our way.

Interesting that this graph shows a classic bell shaped curve that we all learned to love in our college statistics classes. It is safe to predict regular variations that follow the same pattern. Therefore, I predict in 20 - 50 years (a very short time span in the grand scheme of things), that a cool down will occur.

Re:Science is hard

[syphax]

Oh man, you were talking a good game until you came out with the The "best model" in 1995 mispredicted the temperature in 2000 by 300% LIE.

How many times must this lie be debunked [columbia.edu]?

Apparently, very many times. Key points: It wasn't 1995, it was 1988, and Hansen wasn't off by 300%, he was frickin' on the money.

Also, remember that Arrhenius predicted [columbia.edu] anthropogenic CO2 global warming over 100 years ago. The basic premise- more atmospheric CO2 means more trapped heat- is well-understood and not controversial. The open question is the strength of the climate's negative feedback cycles.

Re:Science is hard

[SETIGuy]

The "best model" in 1995 mispredicted the temperature in 2000 by 300%.

Let's see... The earth's average temperature surface temperature is about 288K (15C,59F). That would mean that the "best model" either predicted an average surface temperature of 96K (-177C, -287F) or it predicted a temperature of 864K (591C,1095F).

Either that one sucky model, or you're a lying sack of sh*t.