In the US, 2012 is the warmest year-to-date on record

Something's not right.

We've had both the wettest April and coldest May ever, in over 100+ years of records. I'm cheesed off as I've had to have my heating on in June!?! Daytime temps of 8c/46f for a summer are not good.

BBC News - 2012 had wettest April for 100 years, Met Office says

Stockholm braves coldest June weather in 84 years: experts - Yahoo! News UK

 

ya, its 55º here. 49 of 50 states set records for warmest 12 months, warmest year to date and warmest spring. we, however, were left out in the cold...

 

We took an early vacation in Hilton Head, and we had a tropical storm because the hurricane season got started early. Now that's global warming?

 

It's all messed up. I had daffodils coming up in November/December last year in my garden instead of March/April and today I saw some conkers (horse chestnuts seeds) Conkers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia fallen down and they are supposed to fall in late Autumn. We had our summer in April 29c/84f but in June it's Autumn at 8c/46f. Oh and the last 3 winters have been really cold for us -15c/5f.

Whatever the cause, somethings messing up the weather and seasons.

 

AccuWeather.com - Climate Change | 2012 Likely to Reach Record High Global Temperature, according to NASA

Since it was predicted as part of the ENSO prediction and predictions of solar radiation, we can assume ENSO has a lot to do with it. The combination of enso in a warming world should make this spring and maybe summer a new maximum. But since the world is warming we can expect more records.

 

Not sure if this was 'tongue in cheek' , or not.
Since there were no smiley faces, I will treat it as it wasn't, my apologies if you already know this information.

Global Warming does not mean ALL areas of the globe will warm at the same time.
As a matter of averages, April actually was the warmest April on record for the entire northern hemisphere. Note, that does not mean it was the warmest for every spot in the northern hemisphere. It does mean that the average April temperatures over the northern hemisphere was the warmest.

Over the entire globe, April was the 5th warmest on record, indicating there were a few more 'cold spots' in the southern hemisphere, but again, if you take the overall average, it was pretty darn warm.

In general, as you put more energy into a system, you get wilder weather as the system 'shunts' off that extra energy. Other heat sinks, such as the ocean, will also absorb more energy/heat.
Just as temperature chances will affect the jet stream (in a variety of ways), extra heat, fresh water, etc will alter ocean currents.
Other things can affect ocean currents as well, which complicates trying to figure out exactly what is causing the changes.

The UK is as warm as it is due in large part to the ocean currents. If that current changes, it will have a much larger affect on the UK than most other affects.

I guess in summary, just because it is cold (or hot) in your city or region, don't take your eye off the ball (global temperatures).

 

According to this graph ,global temperatures are down 0.027 C.

 

Mojo, could you explain the map a bit?
From my research, it looks as if the 'NCEP cfsv2' is not a history, but a computer model.
Not sure about that though, would be nice to have a better idea of what we are looking at.

In addition, the 00Z and 006 indicators, from what I could find indicate this is for the time from midnight to 6am. Not sure what time zone, or if it is local for all locals??

Also, normally comparisons are done to either privious year or the 20th century average. Any idea why the seem to be comparing these temperatures to '1980-2010'?

 

Consider the source:
Policlimate.com

That web site has an eulogy to Andrew Breitbart who was sued for slander when he edited a video to reverse what was said at a meeting. Over and over again, Breitbart practiced and advocated quoting out of context and to advocate a political point of view (aka., "Poli" of Policlimate.com.) Posting a single map, a six hour interval, is the signature for quoting out of context in global climate change. The fix is to review all of the data for a period surrounding this one observation to see the trend over the week.

Any system will have data variations, snapshots, that can lead to false conclusions. The absence of trend data in this case along with coming from Policlimate.com, a source that admires quoting out of context to make false claims, I don't buy it. My only surprise is they overlaid this data point with their web site URL.

MEMO TO MOJO: Make a local copy of the image and use a graphics editor to remove "Policlimate.com" from the image. It won't fix the problem but by hiding the source, it could lengthen the time wasted fetching the missing data from the NOAA web site.​

However, it turns out there is an explanation:
What Happened to all the Snow? - NASA Science

I've noticed that clouds, especially those from storms, show a strong, local heating. That matches perfectly the image Mojo posted. In effect, the January 2012 weather corralled winter storms over the Arctic. Add to that any loss of data, satellites and ground processing systems do lose data, and a single, 6 hour interval would appear cooler. But this one data point rapidly disappears when all of the NOAA data is used.

Bob Wilson

 

But its OK to single out the USA because its been hot here.
You think its OK to extrapolate "GLOBAL" warming from only the USA temp, which is approximately 0.02% of the Earths surface.

 

Heres the satellite Global temps.Not nearly the "warmest year to date on record"

 

Thank you for the graph Mojo.
As stated above though, April was not the warmest surface temperatures for the globe, just the US and Northern hemisphere.
Your graph also is not showing surface temperatures, but lower atmosphere temperatures.
Other groups working on analysing the satellite data have come up with different (bigger) rates (increases) for the warming of the lower atmosphere. It is a fascinating field of work and I look forward to seeing it continue and get more refined.

 

BTW The temp raw data do not show any record warming.
The 1930s were warmer.Only after "adjustments" is there a record.
A Graph to Debunk AGW: Is The United States Actually Getting Warmer? by John Hinderaker | Climate Realists

 

Actually I think it is hilarious that Sen. Inhofe's book,"The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future," comes out within weeks of learning that 4,000 new USA, winter high temperatures. He is, after all, trying to sell his point of view but the winter of 20011-12 'conspired' to set new high temperature records. Just a happy accident of history.

Personally, I'm using NOAA and NASA facts and data along with independent confirmation by non-USA, climate scientists. The CO{2} climate models make sense; the data trends are consistent with the models, and; independent scientists who study climate seem to hold the same consensus. Add to that, changing growth seasons and animal migrations, even flora and fauna show it is happening. But these are the sources I find credible.

The counter arguments seem to be a minority and poorly supported by the data. For example, Dr. John Christy wrote an article for the local paper about how temperatures at the Huntsville Airport had declined since the 1930s. Only he forgot to mention the airport moved from the City to a farm area about ten miles to the West of town. There was no mention of the "urban island" heat effect. This type of omission seems to be easily found when looking at the counter arguments.

BTW, I also realize local weather is impacted by global warming and will lead to some areas seeing locally, colder temperatures while many others are seeing warmer and likely wetter weather.

Weather is not climate but I'm amused when weather punctures Sen. Inhofe's book tour.

Bob Wilson

 

That is a fine graph but the trend 'curve' is inaccurate. Plotting the average of the peaks and average of the minimums clearly shows an upward slope over time.

Bob Wilson

 

hell with all that scientific stuff. get outside and take a look for yourself. do you think that the weather so far this year has been warmer, colder or about the same?

now granted you are on the West Coast so you did not see it as extremely as people jogging in 80 º temps in Feb in Chicago a "mere" 40 º above normal (or was it 50?) and ya, temp anomalies happen all the time which is the reason we keep records of highs and lows because lets face it, why else would we? they certainly are not an indicator of what type of weather we can expect?

so why bother tracking all that stuff anyway? well, that is because that is what we do. that is why cars advertise HP, 0-60 times and all that other crap. lets face it, a Fiesta with a 1.4 liter engine is quick enough to merge into freeway traffic so why do we need to know anything else.

well, breaking 25,000 (guessing here so dont flame me if its only 15,000 or 35,000) records during a period where there are normally only 3-400 records (most of them record lows) is not always an indication of a trend but i think it is worth recording

 

Definitely cooler than last year to me. We also got much more rain, so things are much greener and prettier.

Yep, there is a lot of weather going on. Not nearly as much bad here as happened in the 50s.

Lots of the weather is controlled by oscilations like ENSO. When we look at longer periods of time we can get to climate, and that is warming up. I hope it stays cooler than last year here, where locally we set all kinds of records except high temperature. Most days over 100, least rain, it was nasty. ENSO did not move enough to give us a normally cooler summer, but at least there is water this year.

The long term global temperature is where to look for warming, not local highs or temperatures in north america. The US has lagged global temperatures.

 

i hope you do to. i know people in TX and OK that have been devastated by the drought there. still got a long recovery ahead

 

Here is a question,,, how much do you suppose temperature rise has been tempered by increased melting? For example, melt water might be temporarily cooling other water, leading to cooler local air temps. So if global average temps a rising, is melting ice masking some of that rise, leading to potential false conclusions as to how mitch temps at rising.

As a follow up, if we move to an summ ice free arctic, would the change in albedo, and the comparative lack of thermal mass of ice lead to a dramatic increase going forward?

Icarus.