Last year was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years – capping a nine-year warming streak “unprecedented in the historical record” that was driven in part by the burning of fossil fuels, the government reported yesterday.
According to the government’s National Climatic Data Center, the record-breaking warmth – which caused daffodils and cherry trees to bloom throughout the East on New Year’s Day – was the result of both unusual regional weather patterns and the long-term effects of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there’s a broad scientific consensus that is producing climate change.”
Climate experts generally do not make much of temperature fluctuations over one or two years, but Lawrimore said the record 2006 temperatures were part of a long and worrisome trend. For instance, NOAA said, the past nine years have all been among the 25 warmest years on record for the continental United States.
In response to a question from the floor, he said that global warming was a far-off risk whose magnitude was uncertain.
He said that from an economic point of view, it would be more rational to spend lots of money on today’s other big problems, and only make small and limited changes in policies relating to global warming, such as a slight increase in gasoline or carbon taxes.
Lawrimore said other NOAA research has found that the rate of temperature increase has been significantly greater in the past 30 years than at any time since the government started collecting national temperature data in 1895.
I guess it’s possible that 1894 happened to be a super-hot year, but it doesn’t seem likely. “Warmest U.S. Year On Record” would be a slightly more accurate title. Warmest in past 112 years would be pretty misleading.
Being as a large number of scientists say it IS real I don’t think as an American I’ll go nuts over that news. The hotly debated issues are “to what degree will this continue,” “how will it affect us,” and “can we make changes to stop it?”
EDIT: I should edit this to prevent reading into my open statement. No I do not think the entire earth is getting warmer. But yes I do think we are seeing a climate shift. Global temps are, after all, presented in averages. So while some places are getting hotter, some are not and have actually gotten cooler. I’m not sure of my stance on what will happen over time.
How does it not “seem likely”? Given that we only have temperature data for the last 112 years, it’s bogus to assess probabilities outside that range.
Further, how is “Warmest U.S. Year On Record” LESS misleading than “Warmest in Past 112 Years”? 112 years is the extent of data collection, yes? This is the warmest year during the period of data collection, yes? Thus the title is accurate, not misleading.
If you want misleading, just look at the title of this thread.
When I hear “warmest in past 112 years” that implies to me that the 113th year was even warmer, which while that could be the case, it’s not what is actually being stated. “On Record” is a far more accurate description of what information is actually being stated by this article.
A raise in mean global temperatures by a degree should, over time, for instance, make storms, particularly hurricanes, stronger and more numerous. This may be the warmest year on record - the hurricane season was light and miniscule.
Why? Climate is complex and deals with long term effects. Measure the hurricane seasons over 50 - 100 years. Weather is short term and climatic effects are cumulative but small (think coriolis). 70 degrees in Boston in January? El Nino.
So you think it’s likely that the year before data collection started just happened to be warmer than the next 112 years, despite the warmest years in the record being clustered toward the end of the period?
Sure it’s extrapolating, but it’s only a single year outside the range of a century of data. If you don’t think we can say anything at all about it, then you must be pretty worried that the sun isn’t going to rise tomorrow.
Further, how is “Warmest U.S. Year On Record” LESS misleading than “Warmest in Past 112 Years”? 112 years is the extent of data collection, yes? This is the warmest year during the period of data collection, yes? Thus the title is accurate, not misleading.
The way these things are normally stated, if a city experiences it’s ‘worst blizzard in 17 years’, the implication is that 18 years ago or perhaps a bit further back the city experienced an equally bad or worse blizzard. This is not the case with the 2006 temperature and the record. For all we know, 2006 was the warmest year in the last 500.
