Warmest 12-Month Period Recorded In US 297
First time accepted submitter seanzig writes "Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground provides a good overview of the State of the Climate Report from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). May 2011 through Apr. 2012 broke the previous record (Nov. 1999 — Oct. 2000). A number of other interesting records (e.g., warmest March on record) and stats emerged. It just presents the data and does not surmise anything about the causes or what should be done about it."
Re:what you should do? (Score:4, Informative)
I think the reason for this is quite clear. It's quite clearly anthropomorphic as well (if you make the assumption that politicians are human).
The hot air from Washington, DC, the various European capitals, Moscow, Bejing and countless other warrens is overwhelming the planet's defenses.
Most of the Rest of the Planet, However.... (Score:1, Informative)
...is trending cooler.
Enough cooler, apparently, to more than balance out the relatively local heat we've seen in the US, which is caused by a regional weather situation that's also apparently starting to change.
No Alaska (Score:0, Informative)
This report ignores Alaska, the actual statement is "Ten warmest 12-month periods for the contiguous U.S.". So it was the warmest as long as you ignore about 40% of the country, which they also claim Alaska had more snow than any other year since 1955.
If this is what passes for proof of AWG I think I'll choose to ignore it from now on.
Re:No Alaska (Score:5, Informative)
More snow does not mean cooler temps. More snow means more moisture in the air.
Re:Gardens like winter. (Score:3, Informative)
Your garden depends on winter to periodically kill diseases and pests.
Yeah, it's a pisser down there in Florida where nothing at all grows any more due to all the pests and disease.
Re:Most of the Rest of the Planet, However.... (Score:4, Informative)
...is trending cooler.
Enough cooler, apparently, to more than balance out the relatively local heat we've seen in the US, which is caused by a regional weather situation that's also apparently starting to change.
2011 was the ninth warmest year on record despite the cooling influences of La Nina. What period are you taking your trend off? The last three-four years?
Re:But the weather and climate are different, righ (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Alaska (Score:4, Informative)
Two, over 80% of Alaskans believe climate change is happening, and over 55% believe it's human caused. I'm pretty sure those are both the highest for any "red" state. Why? We've warmed 3.0 degrees (C) in the last 50 years, which is more than a little insane. We (not me personally, I've only been here a few years) have watched it happen. Yes, this year, was a little bit below normal, mostly driven by interior regions (Fairbanks), while the coast, especially the north coast, was still above normal.
But don't worry, I'm sure they'll be able to remove the "contiguous" qualifier soon enough. For instance, every day in April, save one, was above-normal. But I'm sure that won't change what you believe either.
Re:Most of the Rest of the Planet, However.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Alaska (Score:5, Informative)
So I am wrong, care to educate me, o' weather scientist. Are you saying moisture density in the air is not increased by heat? And why would it have to be colder for more snow. I find that snow is more likely to fall closer to the freezing point, in fact the temperature generally rises when it snows.
Basically what I am saying is it can get too cold to snow (well not really but the probability the conditions for snow are vastly reduced), below 0F you really don't get much precipitation. Snow requires a few things to occur before you see those white flakes. 1 Moisture saturation, the more moisture in the air means the higher probability of snow, 2. Temperature, must allow the ice crystals to stay frozen on their way down, 3 a temperature difference between the lower atmosphere and the area where snow develops. On really cold days there is not enough heat to drive the saturated air to the very cold layers of the atmosphere where snow forms
Oh wait you said I was wrong? Hmm guess not.
Re:Keep it coming! (Score:3, Informative)
The time between peak temperatures can be used to measure climate change. Global warming is expected to decrease those times. Since it was 12 years since the hottest year on record, the next value might be 7 years, then 5 years, and so on. Without climate change those times would be a function of the length of recorded temperatures and would usually increase in duration as more data was recorded (40 yrs to 50 years to 80 years, etc.).
Re:No Alaska (Score:5, Informative)
Except snow doesn't form down here, it forms high up in the atmosphere, to get that water up there you have to have heat to drive the saturated air up. Notice it snows far heavier on the warmer winter days. Once the temp drops well below freezing the chances of snow are greatly reduced.
Re:Good science and hats off to him (Score:2, Informative)
Pretentions of honesty: Looking at the rest of the innane comments in this story, it's clear to me that slashdot has upset the Heartland Institue with yesterday's story and their army of astroturfers and useful idiots will now fill this thread with noise. Keep up the good work slashdot!
Re:Most of the Rest of the Planet, However.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Keep it coming! (Score:4, Informative)
Climate is a different story and can be quantifiable to the extent that effects such as El Nino were identified over a century ago.
What is your motivatation to mislead with irrelevant rubbish such as you posted above? Just because there is noise in a system does not mean the system does not exist.
Re:Gardens like winter. (Score:3, Informative)
"Tell me the downside of being able to grow two crops a year of many vegetables."
Dengue Fever
Malaria
Rift Valley Fever
Yellow Fever Eastern equine encephalitis
Japanese encephalitis
La Crosse encephalitis
St. Louis encephalitis
West Nile virus
Western equine encephalitis
and that's only some insects, there's more fun coming for you.
Re:Most of the Rest of the Planet, However.... (Score:4, Informative)
You are a luddite when it comes to climate science. Or science in general since your arguments wouldn't even stand up to the most basic scrutiny of a peer-review.
How about you take your clearly superior intelligence and read up on the subject. You can start with the IPCC report which explains the research very well in laymen's terms. After that, you can read the thousands of referenced scientific papers on the subject.
Or if that's too much, you could go ahead and write a paper without doing any background research that explains the current observations without using AGW. Submit it and win a Nobel (assuming your paper doesn't get absolutely destroyed for the child-like logic you use here). That's a cool million for you right there for the taking. Easy as pie.
Global warming isn't some new theory someone pulled out of their ass a couple years ago. It's over 120 years old. Scientists have been predicting a warming world due to increases in greenhouse gases since before the computer was invented. So if you can come up with a plausible theory that explains how all the current science was built on nonsense you'd be the scientific equivalent of Einstein.