Warmer
EmailThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just put out the following press release: NOAA REPORTS 2006 WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD FOR U.S.
General Warming Trend, El Niño Contribute to Milder Winter Temps "The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Seven months in 2006 were much warmer than average, including December, which ended as the fourth warmest December since records began in 1895." The full release is HERE. You’ll see that parts of it are self-contradictory; when the numbers are finally crunched, 1998 may actually turn out to have been slightly warmer. The map that goes with the release is all red, NOAA says, because all of the lower 48 states were in record territory. 1998 and 2006 both show temperature spikes because of El Nino events, says the NCDC. An El Nino (you’ll recall it’s the patch of warm water in the equatorial Pacific that rearranges the jet streams blowing over us) generally means warmer, wetter weather for many parts of the country. Here’s NOAA’s graph of U.S. temperatures since regular records began in 1895 (click to enlarge): There’s an explanatory paragraph later in the release: "The unusually warm start to this winter reflected the rarity of Arctic outbreaks across the country as an El Niño episode continued in the equatorial Pacific. A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases. This has made warmer-than-average conditions more common in the U.S. and other parts of the world. It is unclear how much of the recent anomalous warmth was
due to greenhouse-gas-induced warming and how much was due to the El Niño-related circulation pattern. It is known that El Niño is playing a major role in this winter’s short-term warm period." A little while ago I got a call from someone there, pointing out that this is the first time the phrase "greenhouse gases" has been in one of their periodic releases. On its own, of course, this news is only one small piece of a large puzzle. The World Meteorological Organization put out a preliminary report in December that said 2006 would be the sixth warmest on record, and the British Meteorological Office last week said that El Nino plus greenhouse warming added up to a 60% probability that 2007 would be the warmest. (More on both HERE.) The U.S. is only a few percent of the planet’s surface, and individual years are far less important than long-term trends. Thoughts are welcome. Click below.
Space Station Flies Over Eastern U.S. at Night 
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Many thanks for the fascinating links, Ned, and for the warning in the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph: what appears to be a trend for the US for several years isn’t necessarily a world-wide trend. I must admit, though, that the NOAA map you reproduced certainly looks alarming, shaded entirely in red as it is. I also have to wonder if successive years after the El Nino phenomenon ceases will be increasingly warmer.
On a totally unrelated note, what did you think of Apple Computer’s product introduction today?
Posted by: chuck | January 9, 2007, 3:53 pm 3:53 pm
The world doesn’t care. And we have ourselves to blame; those of us who have the ability and the ethical discipline to make a difference. But instead, we worship the Trumps, Hiltons, and Spears for role models. At least that is what our children are being taught.
The world doesn’t care. There are people who see natural resources as plentiful and infinite. And there are those who must live upon a life of classes and status; purchasing luxury SUVS gas guzzlers so they may “look down” on others.
The world doesn’t care. There are those who constantly destroy the air with industrial plants for the sake of billions of dollars in profit.
The bottom line will always be the same. Money is the source of all evil. One can never have enough of it. Why give birth to your offspring when you leave them nothing to hope for. Selfish people we are.
Posted by: Ben | January 9, 2007, 5:06 pm 5:06 pm
I have a question. It is my understanding that the magnetic poles of the earth are in a state of change. Where the Magnetic current has changed from North to South to South to North. Has anyone looked at this as the reason for the increase in tempature through out the world? It is my understanding that this takes place every 130,000 years and we of course don’t have a record that we can rely on from that time to verify whats going on now. I would think we need to look at this from a stand point of El Nino and other climatic changes. thanks John
Posted by: John Abben | January 9, 2007, 5:47 pm 5:47 pm
It’s strange that this report doesn’t mention that most of the warmest years on record occurred in the last decade. So whether 2006 is the warmest ever or not isn’t critical … Its going to be in the top ten …
But hey .. we can ignore it … probably just normal warming fluxuation that occurs every 100k years or so … yea … that seems like a good bet.
Posted by: Joe in Cary NC | January 9, 2007, 6:58 pm 6:58 pm
I live in Idaho. It is going to be -30 tomorrow. For some reason I don’t feel warm. 10,000 years ago there was a one mile thick sheet of ice covering the very place that I live. I guess something got warmer to melt all that ice.
If Algore would just fly coach instead of on the private jet…
Posted by: LB Tartaglia | January 9, 2007, 10:11 pm 10:11 pm
I Live in NE Pennsylvania now so I looked up the local weather history. Here the record highs were set in the mid 1980s and mid 1950s and I remember snowball fights in T-shirts back in the 1950s when I was growing up in New York and my oil lines freezing because of the 10 to 20 below zero days in the 1970s in New Jersey. Yes it may be gettibg warmer in some places but it will probably get colder again too. Record keeping is irrelevant if the measuring devices were not as accurate as todays (and they were not).
Posted by: Ed | January 9, 2007, 11:52 pm 11:52 pm
People don’t buy SUVs to look down on other people. People buy SUVs because you cannot fit a family into a small car. They don’t make station wagons anymore; you either buy a small car or an SUV. At 6’3″, I can barely even get into one of the sardine cans they sell as cars these days.
There are several reasons for all this. The government classifies SUVs, along with vans and pickups and anything else I might consider actually getting into, as trucks rather than cars. Trucks do not have to meet the same mileage requirements as cars.
Environmentalists have been demanding better gas milleage from vehicles for years. The cheapest way to increase the milleage of vehicles is to reduce their weight (much easier than improving the engines). This means that vehicles are being made out of ever-lighter materials. This makes cars less safe in accidents, of course, but you can’t have everything. The other thing it leads to is smaller cabins. After all, you can save quite a bit of material if you cut the cabin size down a bit.
So, we have a generation of cars that the those of us with somewhat above average height simply cannot fit in to, and which will not comfortably fit a family once the younger ones are out of car seats.
Environmentalists not taking cultural factors into account created the SUV. They tackled the problem (excessive consumption of gasoline) from the wrong direction (getting Congress to regulate gas milleage of cars). They have no one to blame but themselves that it didn’t work.
Posted by: Michael Suttkus, II | January 10, 2007, 8:29 am 8:29 am
Michael, I’m also about 6’3″. My experience is that you get more head room in the smaller cars than you do in the larger cars. VW has the best head room of all, but the Honda Civic and Toyota Prius have ample head room for the front seats, and the Civic also has ample head room in the rear (even for someone who is 6’3″). True, SUVs have more head room than most large cars, but my experience is that they are about the same in head room as the smaller cars. I have no idea why this is true, but it is.
As for safety, my previous Civic was totalled by a collision with a semi truck while traveling at 70 mph. Neither my wife nor I even had a scratch on us. If we had been driving a larger vehicle, I am certain we would have been injured. The Civic has a very good safety rating. In fact, I believe it has the highest possible safety rating.
Posted by: Ben Hocking | January 10, 2007, 1:30 pm 1:30 pm
I also am about 6″3″, but I got rid of my 06 Civic so as to avoid culpability for the 30 to 40 BARRELS of oil which I am told the typical new vehicle takes to manufacture. My four-person family has downsized to one used car. If you want to reduce global warming:
1) Don’t buy cars or anything else new.
2) Don’t generate a family of the size that requires more than a Civic, unless you adopt.
3) Design your life not to support or take support from auto, construction or other wasteful
industries.
4) Consider buying wind credits, avoiding airplanes, and not driving to excess. Walk instead, or take a bicycle.
5) Get a small house, to reduce cooling and heating.
Posted by: Steve-O | January 10, 2007, 3:54 pm 3:54 pm
NOAA needs to go back to grade school. They calculated the temperature to the 6th decimal place in order to create the answer they wanted. I can confidently state that none of the temperatures were measured to 1/1,000,000 of a degree. They say that they used 1200, mostly rural points, “adjusted” for urbanization and statistically averaged the final answer – which, by the way, isn’t even the final, final answer. They just wanted to get the headlines before they actually calculated the final answer since it may not be the answer they want. Look up “significant figures.” In science and engineering, you can’t state an answer with more significant figures than the least accurate input. Most of the temperatures were rounded to the closest degree! The answer should be stated to the closest degree! Anything else is not scientifically correct – it’s just environmental BS.
Posted by: TxEngineer | January 14, 2007, 12:27 am 12:27 am
I agree with Steve-O. Everyone has an obligation as respectable person to take care of the enviroment around us. Instead of supporting the “new” market, we should be buying pre-owned products. It’s strange that most people in our type of society and culture don’t realize that 3rd world countries were created by 1st world countries like us. The reason we live like this and are able to waste as much as we do, are because other people get paid so little to produce the raw materials that we eventually throw away, and by paying them so little they don’t have any money in their economy to build anything of much importance. For example, the reason I don’t shop at Wal-Mart is because they sell you on the idea that it’s a win-win situation for everyone, IT’S NOT. The reason you are only paying prices like $4.89 and $7.56 is because the other man/woman/child in a very less developed country is getting paid that much less, all because we need our 5 dollar toaster and 3 dollar DVD’s. We are a selfish nation. Do you want to know who gives more than anyone? It’s the 2nd and 3rd world countries…they give us the ablility to live the kind lifestyle’s we live. They have very little power to negotiate because they have to make decisions like which child to feed today, while we all make decisions about what color cell phone we want. That’s not a line of crap, that’s the hard truth. If your offened because you think I’m trying to guilt trip you, then you should feel guilty, I know I do. A while back I decided to stop acting like I deserve to waste and over-consume. I realized that I can’t change the world by my self, but I can at least do my part my not being apart of the over-consuming machine we live in and to stop buying tons of things I don’t need, I would hope more people in this world would start voting with their wallets and hearts, instead of party lines. I know this is a blog about the enviroment, but if we don’t care about eachother, than what gives any of you the idea that we’ll ever care about the home we all live on.
Posted by: John O'Brian | January 15, 2007, 11:36 am 11:36 am