Rain, wind and cold — weather-bound Friday here on California’s north coast.
Rain scheduled for all day, and supposedly heavy tonight. Maybe some sun tomorrow…
Despite the freezing-ass cold of the upper-eastern US, and the epic New York snowstorms, the world is still getting warm — last month, California had the third-warmest October since record-keeping started more than 100 years ago, and we’re on track to have the warmest year yet.
And yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its Global Analysis, a check-up on the world’s environment.
Key note: ‘The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–October period (year-to-date) was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F). The first ten months of 2014 were the warmest such period on record.’
(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Galatea of the Spheres,’ found here).
This also with our oceans:
For January–October, the average global sea surface temperature was also record high, beating the previous record of 1998 by 0.03°C (0.05°F).
The average global land surface temperature tied with 1998 and 2002 as the fourth highest on record.
Record warmth for the year-to-date was particularly notable across much of northern and western Europe, parts of Far East Russia, and large areas of the northeastern and western equatorial Pacific Ocean.
It is also notable that record warmth was observed in at least some areas of every continent and major ocean basin around the world.
And from CBS News: ‘Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said the issue isn’t so much about record highs, but trends over multiple decades. Seeing the 38th consecutive October that is warmer than the 20th century average “is climate change, and we are seeing it in spades.”‘
And: ‘It is also the 356th month in a row the world’s temperature has been warmer than the 20th century average.’
Dr. Jeff Masters nutshell-take of the NOAA report at WunderBlog:
Earth’s temperature so far in 2014 has been the warmest ever recorded.
This comes despite the absence of an El Niño event, which is usually required in order for a new temperature record to be set.
If NOAA’s predicted 58 percent chance of an El Niño event this winter verifies, we could easily have two consecutive warmest years on record — 2014 and 2015.
Opponents of climate action have pushed the idea that Earth’s climate has not warmed since 1998, but that is false assertion that uses a cherry-picked year in an attempt to confuse people about the long-term climate warming that is occurring.
Earth’s climate is warming, and based on the evidence, more than 97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that humans are responsible.
Climate change is already causing significant impacts to people and ecosystems, and these impacts will grow much more severe in the coming years.
We can choose to take economically sensible steps to lessen the damage of climate change, and the cost of inaction is much higher than the cost of action.
In reality, the effort right now to stop the worse parts of climate change are fairly nil, with the only real option is adaptation, and hope the bad shit blows over quickly — after we first park all the cars, of course.