Bright sunshine, clear skies and warm temperatures this Monday morning on California’s north coast as we spin through another dry, heated episode.
Yesterday was hot (relative, of course).
Sunday’s high of 74 broke Eureka’s record of 67 set way-back in 1983 — up here in Mckinleyville, we also notched a 74-high (according to the NWS weather thingy), but don’t know if a record or not.
Probably is, odds on it…

Heat is quickly turning into hot — not only for us up here in the more-cool climes, but last month worldwide was the hottest month ever, and third month in a row to set a record. Relative to everybody (the Guardian on Friday): ‘The global temperature in March has shattered a century-long record and by the greatest margin yet seen for any month.’

(Illustration: Tessa Hunt-Woodland‘s ‘Solar Flare,’ found here)

I spied the Guardian article late Friday, and was going to post about it, but never got around to it. And then the weekend, which can be hard for me to get through — I hate Saturday and Sunday, always have. The two days even ‘sound’ different then the rest of the week.
Although a major climate news item, and another tell-tale episode in the narrative toward catastrophe, it most-likely got sucked into the Friday news dump, which unless nowadays contains The Donald’s latest idiocy, is shuffled-off until Monday, if then.
And if you get your news from only TV, you may never hear about it.

Our environment is unraveling way-quickly — some key points from the Guardian piece:

February was far above the long-term average globally, driven largely by climate change, and was described by scientists as a “shocker” and signalling “a kind of climate emergency”.
But data released by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) shows that March was even hotter.
Compared with the 20th-century average, March was 1.07C hotter across the globe, according to the JMA figures, while February was 1.04C higher.
The JMA measurements go back to 1891 and show that every one of the past 11 months has been the hottest ever recorded for that month.
Data released released later on Friday by Nasa confirmed last month was the hottest March on record, but the US agency’s data indicated February had seen the biggest margin.
The Nasa data recorded March as 1.65C above the average from 1951-1980, while February was 1.71C higher.
The World Meteorological Organisation, the UN body for climate and weather, said the March data had “smashed” previous records.
…
Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University in the US, responded to the March data by saying: “Wow. I continue to be shocked by what we are seeing.”
He said the world had now been hovering close to the threshold of “dangerous” warming for two months, something not seen before.
“The [new data] is a reminder of how perilously close we now are to permanently crossing into dangerous territory,” Mann said.
“It underscores the urgency of reducing global carbon emissions.”

And that bit at the end, an example of pure understatement.

Just as that heated information was tossed into the fright tank, another hot item, which is puzzling scientists: Why is the Arctic ice melt coming faster this year?
As reported last week, an analysis by  the Danish Meteorological Institute revealed a huge region of Greenland is experiencing a freakishly early spring thaw. So drastic, researchers at first figured their instruments were broken.
From PerfScience, also on Friday:

Robert Fausto of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said some weather stations in the upper regions of the ice sheet reported high temperatures on Monday, 11 April.
Some of the sites even had temperature more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
A station, which is over 6,000 feet above sea level, reported temperature of about 99 degrees Fahrenheit.
April never experienced such a rise in temperature in the past, added Fausto.
…
Polar researchers thought their models were broken when they first saw the results.
…
“We had to check that our models were still working properly,” Peter Langen, climate scientist at DMI, told blog Polar Portal.
Temperature readings on the ice were in line with the numbers, however, exceeding 10C in some places. Even a weather station 1,840 metres above sea level recorded a maximum of 3.1C, which data analysts said would be warm for July, let alone April.
According to a report in CBS NEWS by Brian Mastroianni, “Spring thaw is coming exceptionally early in Greenland this year, with 50-degree Fahrenheit temperatures creating a melt area that makes up 12 percent of Earth’s most northern ice sheet, according to data released this week by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI).”
“It is a very unusual situation, especially so early in the year, with very cold air and deep low pressures system to the west and east of Greenland and very warm air forming a ‘cap’ over the island,” Martin Stendel, a DMI climate scientist, said on the organization’s website.
“This helped to force a frontal system with very warm air up the west coast bringing rain over the ice sheet.”

And maybe due to heat above, heat below — via TechTimes, again on Friday:

Greenland is in the midst of an unexpected early ice melt due to geothermal heat, a new study has found.
More specifically, the heat deep within Earth boosts the fast ice flow and melting of glaciers in the country.
In fact, approximately 50 percent of area covered in ice in North-Central Greenland now rests on a defrosted bed.
The resulting water is directed toward the ocean via a dense water system underneath the ice.
“The strength of this paper is that many different lines of reasoning about data lead to the same conclusion,” says study author Jesse Johnson from the University of Montana.

Dangerous day for a news dump…