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Global Warming Pushes 2010 Temperatures to Record Highs
Scientists from two leading climate research centers publish 'best evidence yet' of rising long-term global temperatures
Global temperatures in the first half of the year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two of the world's leading climate research centers.
A Pakistani boy cools off as temperatures reached 51C in a heatwave last month. (Photograph: MK Chaudhry/EPA) Scientists have also released what they described as the "best evidence yet" of rising long-term temperatures. The report is the first to collate 11 different indicators – from air and sea temperatures to melting ice – each one based on between three and seven data sets, dating back to between 1850 and the 1970s.
The newly released data follows months of scrutiny of climate science after skeptics claimed leaked emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggested temperature records had been manipulated - a charge rejected by three inquiries.
Publishing the newly collated data in London, Peter Stott, the head of climate modeling at the UK Met Office, said despite variations between individual years, the evidence was unequivocal: "When you follow those decade-to-decade trends then you see clearly and unmistakably signs of a warming world".
"That's a very remarkable result, that all those data sets agree," he added. "It's the clearest evidence in one place from a range of different indices."
Currently 1998 is the hottest year on record. Two combined land and sea surface temperature records from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) both calculate that the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record. According to GISS, four of the six months also individually showed record highs.
A third leading monitoring program, by the Met Office, shows this period was the second hottest on record, after 1998, with two months this year – January and March – being hotter than their equivalents 12 years ago.
The Met Office said the variations between the figures published by the different organizations are because the Met Office uses only temperature observations, NASA makes estimates for gaps in recorded data such as the polar regions, and the NCDC uses a mixture of the two approaches. The latest figures will give weight to predictions that this year could become the hottest on record.
Despite annual fluctuations, the figures also highlight the clear trend for the 2000s to be hotter than the 1990s, which in turn were clearly warmer than the previous decade, said Stott.
"These numbers are not theory, but fact, indicating that the Earth's climate is moving into uncharted territory," said Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at Clean Air Cool Planet, a US group dedicated to helping find solutions to global warming.
The Met Office published its full list of global warming indicators, compiled by Hadley Center researcher John Kennedy. It formed part of the State of the Climate 2009 report published as a special bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the NCDC temperature series.
Seven of the indicators rose over the last few decades, indicating "clear warming trends", although these all included annual fluctuations up and down. One of these was air temperature over land – including data from the Climatic Research Unit at the UEA, whose figures were under scrutiny after hacked emails were posted online in November 2009, but the graphic also included figures from six other research groups all showing the same overall trends despite annual differences.
The other six rising indicators were sea surface temperatures, collected by six groups; ocean heat to 700m depth from seven groups; air temperatures over oceans (five data sets); the tropospheric temperature in the atmosphere up to 1km up (seven); humidity caused by warmer air absorbing more moisture (three); and sea level rise as hotter oceans expand and ice melts (six).
Another four indicators showed declining figures over time, again consistent with global warming: northern hemisphere snow cover (two data sets), Arctic sea ice extent (three); glacier mass loss (four); and the temperature of the stratosphere. This last cooling effect is caused by a decline in ozone in the stratosphere which prevents it absorbing as much ultraviolet radiation from the sun above.
One key data set omitted was sea ice in the Antarctic, because it was increasing in some areas and decreasing in others, due to reduced ozone causing changes in wind patterns and sea-surface circulation. This data set showed no clear trend, said Stott. These figures were also in the last report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007.
"It's not that the IPCC didn't look at this data, of course they did, but they didn't put it all together in one place," he added.
The cause of the warming was "dominated" by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, said Stott. "It's possible there's some [other] process which can amplify other effects, such as radiation from the sun, [but] the evidence is so clear the chance there's something we haven't thought of seems to be getting smaller and smaller," he said.
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Show AllYesterday I took the kids to the ocean for a swim here on Canada's Atlantic Coast. The water was incredibly warm- as warm as we used to experience in late August. We had no real winter to speak of, and this summer is like none other we've had. Yet my brother-in-law, an aerospace engineer, scoffs at the scientific data, and the real evidence we see here in Nova Scotia. Hey, we won't be around in a 100 years so why worry about it, he says. I'll print this article for him in any case.
As David Suzuki has said, the earth is like a car racing towards a brick wall, and humans are too busy arguing about what the problem is to bother grabbing the steering wheel and doing something to avoid the inevitable.
Does your brother-in-law have kids? Maybe point out to him If he does, that depending on how old they are, their kids, or their grand kids will probably be alive in 100 years to experience the climate legacy we have left them.
I doubt anything meaningful will be done to curb our CO2 spewing. I suspect It may be too late to turn things around in time to advert major pain for future generations. People in general, and as I look around Americans especially, really don't take the future seriously. We just push things off, even though we know the inevitably of them. Take retirement/old age for example. Most Americans will live into their 70s, we know this, but most have saved little money to help them survive in their golden years. Spend your money now, worry about retirement later, is the perfect metaphor for what we are doing to the atmosphere.
One poll that I would love to be seen done, would be to see how many people that are activity saving so their kids MIGHT go to college, do NOT believe that we should not do anything to curb our CO2 emissions so those same kids MIGHT have a livable climate. I wonder what percentage of the population hold those two opposing ideas?
The future is something to worry about, but saving for it? Given the wages most of us slaves get for our labour, I doubt that people could save enough money for retirement. The ones who really aren't worried are those who work for large corporations, but they're fools as the corps will do their best to cheat them out of any retirement.
I don't have kids, but I think that leaving a world behind that was worse than the one I was born into is the worst sort of thing to do.
I fear you're quite right to say that humans won't act until it's far too late. We'd rather clean up the car accidents, than live with a reduced speed limit.
It’s far too late already and we still are not acting. In a world were money is more valued than children, the future is bleak. My condolences to the future generation. We have failed you.
Yes, I was talking about those who work for large corps etc who had enough money to save for the future but chose not to. That is the problem about generalizations in general, there are always exceptions, and sometimes large number of exceptions. But when you are doing relatively short post they come in handy to make quick points.
And they enable others to put their own two cents in (two cents is all I have left after rent and food is paid, good thing I don't own a car...)
It furthers the conversation if done right, spoils it when we respond to the willfully ignorant. (something I'm very guilty of in some threads...)
Of course none of this data is compelling enough to move the Senate to do anything at all to even slow down global warming. That might cut into a few corporations' bottom lines, and we can't have THAT! The whole world must be sacrificed if it means corporate capitalists are free to party on, and since the Senate is mainly an elite club of multi-millionaires who pass legislation strictly meant to serve the interests of their CEO owners, we can kiss the world good-bye. Heat waves will soon make most of the earth nearly, if not totally, uninhabitable, but the billionaire set will be sailing on their air-conditioned yachts and toasting the memory of Dick Cheney at poolside soirees in their gated communities.
I suspect that those elites won't spend too much time partying as there will be 7 or 8 billion people who'd like to see their heads on pikes lining the sidewalks of wall street.
They would like to see that but are they as motivated to do so fearlessly? We live in interesting times as the Chinese would say.
Clearly not many are motivated yet. But when they've lost everything and they're hungry and thirsty and angry they'll be plenty motivated. Of course it'll be too late then.
We need not let them kill us all. When will we realise that?
Someone should send this article to Senator Imhofe. Of course, he would not read it; he would just use it to plug up some of the holes in the igloo he built for Al Gore.
New "data" created according to the NASA/NOAA recipe:
To cook temperature data and warm the earth artificially, NASA and NOAA have whipped up a nifty recipe. Here are the not-so-secret ingredients for global warming:
1) Reduce temperature reporting stations across the globe from nearly 6,000 in 1970 to 1,500 or less today.
2) Drop out reporting stations in higher latitudes (colder), higher elevations (colder) and mainly rural locations (colder).
3) Cool early temperature records through data “adjustments” to create the impression of a current warming trend.
4) Fail to compensate or under-compensate for urban growth and land-use changes that can produce localized warming known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect.
5) Cherry-pick thermometers from reporting stations sited at busy airports and other warm locales (e.g. near the coast or at lower elevations).
6) Fill gaps in the shrunk-down thermometer network by estimating temperatures using a system of global grid boxes. Then “populate” the grids with thermometers stationed at lower latitudes and altitudes, or near the coast and in other warm spots.
7) If there are no temperature stations inside the grid box, use the closest station in a nearby box (for example, at the bottom of a mountain plateau or on the coast).
8) Adjust the final temperature dataset using “homogenization,” a blending process that effectively spreads a warm bias to all surrounding stations.
9) Voila, global warming made easy!
Once the "data" is prepared, serve with a generous helping of alarmist propaganda, like...
"Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"
(So read the headline in The Independent on 20 March 2000)
"According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia," the story continued, "within a few years" winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event."
You should write fantasy novels. Or is that what you're doing?
Gee jskinner,
Why has the North Pole melted? The Sea Ice is all but gone...
I wonder how the temperature conspirators faked that one.
Oh, I know, why don't you start a story that they put huge flame throwers on the glaciers all over the world and set off Abombs under the icepack!
That will fool everybody and you can keep guzzling along in your monster truck and wife's SUV.
You are one dumb, selfish piece of work.
TJ
May I be the first to give this post an internet eye roll. 8-)
Other than that, I will make no other response to your post, because if you can post that drivel as the planetary temperature continues to rise, you really are hopeless.
IMHO here are four possibilities for your ability to post what you just did:
1). You do not have any basic scientific knowledge
2). You don't want to be inconvenienced in any way to deal with the problem.
3). You are a political hack
4). All of the above.
If you google sections of his postings you'll see it was just a cut and past job that is being passed around the www by trolls most likely sitting in A/C'ed rooms.
May I offer an amendment to your excellent list.
3a) You own shares in an energy company, or work for one of the energy extraction companies.
My forefathers raised corn here in central East TN for over 200 years. Last 10 years or so I can hardly grow a few roastin' ears in my garden-- too wet in the Spring, too dry in Summer. My Dad said when he was a boy-1920's&1930's- it rained 'bout every 2 weeks- just long enough for the soil to dry so it could be tilled (with horses) to kill the weeds. And we don't have many insects (except squash borers and their pals) any more. I have not seen a single grasshopper this year- used to be millions of em- big old things 3 or 4 inches long. NOT A ONE! So Mr jskinner, science genius, tell me where my bugs went.
Keep on a'hoein' MD
I'm new to N.C. only been here for a few years now, but anytime I talk to an old timer they say the same thing. "When I was a kid we used to get a lot of snow around here, but no more..."
Come to the far north my good lads. When I was a kid up here in Edmonton, Hallowe'en was a rather chilly event. Each year until until the 90s there was snow on the ground by October 15. And I don't mean the dustings we get with snow in September that will melt in what used to be called an 'Indian summer'. For the last decade it's not snowed until November. Last year it didn't snow until mid December! That snow only lasted until February.
Then there are the winters. For the last century of my families memory, back to the days when Gramps first moved here, the winters always hit 40 below. Always, never a winter without a good month or two of bitter cold. In the last twenty years however, the temp rarely hits -40 and even then not for long. In the last decade, we've been lucky if the temp hits -30 for a week.
Where did my winter go? Oh deniers of climate change.
Interesting, Im originally from Connecticut and your comment: "Last year it didn't snow until mid December! That snow only lasted until February." describes a typical CT winter, and look at how many hundreds of miles/kilometers further south CT is from you. Yup things are changing.
This is our second year down here. Last summer it was definitely hotter down here than in CT, but not outrageously so. This summer is a whole different animal. I believe the weather man said we had hit our normal allotment of 90 plus degree days as of mid July, and we still have August, and September to go!
Oh, it's right toasty up here too. The lack of rain for the last few years has resulted in the death of old trees and some of the houses starting to settle. Not only the new houses, I mean the houses that were built 50 years ago or more. The ground is so dry that the houses that were thought to have settled are now seeing cracks developing in their foundations. The last day of July and we've been well cooked, August is usually the hottest month. If any have to die as a result of the heat to come, it's a shame that not all of them will be climate change deniers.
The idea that I'll have to put up with wimpy winters for the rest of my days is dead depressing. Worse, it'll mean the spread of more bugs from the south, which we've never seen before. We already have new birds...
Wonder if I'll be able to grow blackberries???
Bummer. And I was so looking forward to starting a citrus grove in Western Canada in a few years.
If it is all a mistake, or a lie, why, then is the ph changing in the ocean?
Please explain to us why the scientists are perpetrating this hoax upon the entire world. Is it that they're all socialist who hate capitalism, and want to see the entire system collapse? Please explain.
Thank you. I needed that reassurance after suffering the steady run of 105(F)heat indices we've experienced in the southern US for the past few months. Now I can just keep repeating "It ain't really real..."
Frankly, I've long objected to preaching "global warming' in the mass media because the average recipient takes it a bit too literally. They seem to assume it means that temperatures are rising evenly everywhere so if it's true, then each day this year should be a degree or two warmer than last year, etc. Then, when they recall last winter's snowstorms, they conclude it's all nonsense.
I sometimes try to explain to those who seem interested that global warming refers to a general increase in the total BTU's in earth's atmosphere and oceans. This does NOT mean that temperatures are rising uniformly in all locales around the world. Instead, what we call weather & climate are big, complex heat engines. When there is a net addition of energy to the atmoshere,those extra BTU's (heat) intensify the turbulence generated by the weather engines and we see more extremes in their behavior. Those extremes can range from hot droughts in one area, floods nearby, followed by vicious winter storms when the jet stream gets kinky and suddenly drags a subarctic blast to lower latitudes. That, from recent and ongoing news reports, people can understand.
But I'm too old to keep up with all the messes we're facing so I save a lot of time with the following summary which I glance at each morning:
"Now the news....
Food, air & water are poison.
Business & government are corrupt.
What most people know for sure ain't so.
And the weather... will be unusual."
This has worked everyday for the last 25 years.
Re: jskinner July 29th, 2010 10:28 am
My, you must be a busy bee today, copy/pasting that dog-eared "NASA/NOAA Recipe" far and wide. Seems you have a lot of help, too!
January 28, 2010
NASA, NOAA cooking the data
by Kirk Myers
http://www.iceagenow.com/NASA_NOAA_cooking_the_data.htm
January 28, 2010
NASA, NOAA create global warming trend with cooked data
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m1d28-NASA-NOAA-create-global-warming-trend-with-cooked-data
***
How about taking a look at something a little more in line with reality?
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/
I already know this information won't make any difference to you but I'm providing it anyway.
You're welcome.
Whoa, that was some blistering rebuttal! Completely vacuous, with a link to yet another article that fails to question the data collection itself.
One way or another human population has to be drastically reduced to have an sustainable eco-system.
Global warming and the resulting famine probably is the only way to do this.
It is hard to imagine that the people are going to do it by making a rational choice.
If population is the issue, why are almost all the CO2 emissions produced by a small fraction of the earths population?
The blame-population types are invariably the same rich USAns who refuse to re-order their own lives.
Population *is* the issue, Sab. Our profligate lifestyle just worsens the problem, it doesn't create it.
Supposing there were only 1M humans on Earth. Could Earth shrug off our (USAian) level of emissions? Of course.
But supposing there were 50G of us. Could Earth cope even if everyone lived at the level of a Bangladeshi peasant? No. And if you claim She could, then I'll bump the number to 100G. At some point you'd have to finally give in and admit that the number is too high regardless of any lifestyle economies.
I agree! And tell Sabo I'm a dirt poor mountain man who's railed against population growth for many years.
In my opinion, the earth can only sustain the same population that it had when we first started using coal as a heat source.
Mairead,
As you know, under capitalism, carbon emissions are a function of economic growth, not populaton growth. And, the size of an economy and population little or nothing to do with each other.
In a world of only a few million, it is a simple matter for the capitalists to arrange for those few million to burn as much fuel as billions do now. They would simply engineer consumer expectations appropriately. Indeed, they will be compelled to do so continue growing and surviving. Imagine a world where nothing less than 7 liters and 6 tons is considered an appropriate middle-class family car, and nothing less than a 20,000 square feet is considered a appropriate middle class home. This is all that population reductions will achieve, if everything else is left the same. Basically, it is a corolary to Jevons Paradox.
If you're saying Capitalism is the issue, then I'd ask what enabled Capitalism and keeps it going? I'd suggest that the answer is "too many people".
Capitalism depends on the existence of hierarchy, where the king or baron or pope or president-for-life or chairman of the people's soviet can assert ownership (or control, which comes to the same thing) over everything AND there are enough individuals who are stupid or psychopathic enough to thug for him.
If you have no way to get a living except as a serf on some baron's claimed land, and the population is big enough that there are enough psychopaths to make a baronial guard to enforce his claim, then you're screwed.
But if the population is sparse enough that there's more land than humans to work it, then psychopaths are likely to be killed when they manifest, and there's not going to be anybody claiming to be a baron. Or not for long.
We can see that in the anthropological record ---individuals trying to assert power didn't/don't last long in pre-tribal societies. A society has to get big enough for people to lose track of who the scum are before the scum can live long enough to gain power.
Ever read Eric Frank Russell's "And Then There Were None"? It's a little simplistic, but funny, thought-provoking, anarchic, and well worth a read. It can be found online.
"Collapse" by Jared Diamond shows how various societies fared in the past. It also suggests to me that the present global society is very unlikely to do what is necessary.
Agreed, if we leave it up to the politicians and their wealthy owners. If we want to live, we'd better start thinking about how to give them the push and do the job ourselves.
SaboCat wrote:
.....If population is the issue, why are almost all the CO2 emissions produced by a small fraction of the earth's population?
The blame-population types are invariably the same rich USAns who refuse to re-order their own lives.....
***
Excellent observation, Sabo.
The people who are going to suffer the most from the encroaching misery of regional climate destabilization are in fact the ones who are least responsible for contributing to the problem.
BTW, give Pittsburg a big hug for me, OK?
Especially The Beehive. :-)
Oh, I dunno about that. How long has the drought been going on in the Southwest?
How's the water supply of the Southeast doing?
We'll all suffer from the effects of climate change and global warming. We might not all suffer equally, but we all will suffer.
If, worldwide, women had the same choices as men, the same influence in societies and economies, you would see an immediate decline in population.
Mark Twain used to tell audiences that, because this planet rotates eastward, Americans were having to breathe air into which the French had farted.
And since no window could be rolled down to let that fouled air escape, someone proposed scheduled times when all Americans simultaneously faced west and began running. This would increase the speed of earth's eastward rotation and get the Frenched, bad air out over the Pacific quicker.
What are the French doing to cause this heat?
Trylon
Using their brains.
Humans - and Americans especially - will reap what we have sown. Whatever horrors lie in the future, they are of our own making, and they will be well-deserved.
Mother nature is in no danger. She will correct the imbalance we have created perfectly on her own, whether it takes thousand years or a million. Part of "correcting the imbalance" will be the starvation of hundreds of millions of human beings - if not billions - just like when a deer population becomes too large for the ecosystem it is in. Nature automatically reduces their numbers to the correct amount for that ecosystem.
It IS coming for humans. Nature cannot be "conquered."
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
Nature will correct the imbalance all right, but the balance may be the very stable equilibrium that has been achieved on Venus.
But Earth will continue her rotational orbit around a Sun that just happens to be "not too close" and "not too distant", unlike Venus or Mars---as long as water is preserved, life, not necessarily human, but SOME kind of life form will evolve. Smaller life forms take a shorter amount of time to evolve. They're adapting to our changing climate. Large animals can't adapt in time. No, I'm sure that Life will continue in some "form" on Earth until our sun dies and/or our moon escapes.
But water won't be preserved at 250C with sulphuric-acid rain. That'll be Earth's fate if Earth overheats enough to melt the methane ice: Venus mode.
Here at work, when sent to the field to inspect a mine site 200-300 miles away, I have to fuss and fight to get a 3.5L Chevy Impala - as close to an "economy car" as the US-DOL MSHA will buy - but still gets almost twice the fuel economy as the vehicles in the motor pool which are SUV's or vans.
They all ask me why in the world I wouldn't want to take an SUV - "don't you feel safer in one?" I just answer that I prefer the handling and ride. I don't dare tell them I want to as little fuel and produce as little carbon emissons as possible on the trip, ("but you're not paying for the gas!", they would say) They would look at me like I'm crazy.
We rarely or never need 4-wheel drive as other such vehicles are always avaialble at the site.
They are also clueless as to why I ride this plug-in-electric motor scooter to work. I tell them I do it to save money - even though this is not true - the upgrade to lithium batteries and associated electronics - all homebuilt, was expensive.
A number of my co-workers have pro-industry stickers in their offices. MSHA is a "friend of coal"
Aside from the poor of Pittsburgh, who can't afford a car and thereby involuntarily have a low carbon footprint, or the Anarchists, who have very low carbon lives riding their old bicycles and living in their squats, I am the only person I know who takes reducing my personal carbon emissions seriously. The liberals certainly don't take it seriously.
I am pissing in the ocean.
Personally I would tell them that you do "want to as little fuel and produce as little carbon emissons as possible on the trip". Say it indignantly, and add "anybody who doesn't is crazy". Change the framing of the discussion, right wingers do it all the time.
The problem is that it goes way beyond a "frame shift".
In the USA, it is considered healthy, wholesome, and morally righetous to rant on and on about percieved sufferings that this or that policy impose on "me" or "my family", or "my business", "my guns", "my car" etc.
But to rant Lambaugh-like over the far greater suffering of people other than oneself - people one doesn't even know as individuals, such as victims of US aggression in in far-off lands, or the fate of children, or children's children in a global climate catastrophe, would be consiered, by typical USAns, as beyond even weird or eccentric. They would, and do, consider such a manifestation of compassionate indignation as so inexplicable and assume you must have ulterior sinister motives - supporting "one world government" that will take away their guns or SUV's or "over-regulate their business" or such.
I know my wife treats my expressons of indignation that way (in her case, a personal attack of some sort) and also immediately accuses me of drinking whether I have or not.
I have come to realize, particularly in my recent ballot-access signature gathering efforts for the Green Party, that a majority of USAns - especially in its suburban areas, are a vile, coarse, self-abosrbed lot, devoid of compassion or any other admirable quality.
You got to hand it to the Bernaysean propaganda syatem. They have created in the USA, and incrasingly other parts of the West, a perfect homo Economicus capitalisticus - a new selfish, hyper-individualstic man, beyond their wildest dreams.
"...and also immediately accuses me of drinking whether I have or not."
That, in my opinion, is why it's better to drink!
"Here's to the sixth extinction!"
Sabo, you might like a book called, "Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity" by Ophum (sp?)