US roasts to hottest year on record by landslide
WASHINGTON (AP) - America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.
A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.
The National Climatic Data Center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.
Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.
"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."
Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record.
Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012. Alaska, however, was cooler than average.
U.S. temperature records go back to 1895 and the yearly average is based on reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the Lower 48 states.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. last year also had the second most weather extremes on record, behind 1998. There were 11 different disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Superstorm Sandy and the drought, NOAA said.
The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the dust bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall. And that means hotter, drier air.
The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.
"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future."
A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.
The National Climatic Data Center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.
Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.
"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."
Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record.
Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012. Alaska, however, was cooler than average.
U.S. temperature records go back to 1895 and the yearly average is based on reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the Lower 48 states.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. last year also had the second most weather extremes on record, behind 1998. There were 11 different disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Superstorm Sandy and the drought, NOAA said.
The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the dust bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall. And that means hotter, drier air.
The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.
"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future."
Hoping Oregon will be Hawaii before I die...
If the temperature gets much higher the earth will burst into flames and be another sun.
 @RalphCramden What's more likely to happen is that the equatorial region will become inhabitable and people will migrate (in our hemisphere) and concentrate North. Canada is monitoring America's immigration issues.The second problem is the provable, observable retreat of the glaciers...look at Mt. Hood. Metropolitan areas (Portland) get their water from runoff (Bull Run watershed) and if there isn't enough water, they drain from the river. That effects fishing and agriculture exactly as we see the struggle in the Klamath Falls basin, which also cannot be argued or flippantly ignored.
 @RalphCramden Hi, Ralph.  I sure miss the old days when I could give you a thumbs down.
Love him or hate him Antony Watts, has more info here,
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/06/does-noaas-national-climatic-data-center-ncdc-keep-two-separate-sets-of-climate-books-for-the-usa/
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/07/an-update-on-my-climate-reference-network-visualization-project/
Ah, nothing like a good global warming article to bring out the luddites. Â
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The 21st century equivalent of the Flat Earth society.
I call bunk. Weather stations are to be located, in rural areas, one hundred feet from reflective surfaces and over sodded ground. If sodded ground is not part of the natural landscape, then over the local area. To that end, airports are disqualified from an objective siting, but airports make up a large part of the collected data. Those rural stations from the early years of the weather service have been swallowed up by community's expanding, to which that data is now suspect.
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The government has a new network called "Climate Reference Network" which it's average is 55.25. It is state of the art and needs no adjustments, make's one wonder why it's not used or reported for averages.
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 @gannon bill gannonÂ
My weather stations, I have 3, are all equal within a few 10th of a degree but are so different that the one at the airport. One of the stations is in a NOAA official enclosure according to their specs.
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In the winter mine are much lower because I am further from the river which has a heating effect. In the summer mine are much hotter for the same reason only the river has a cooling effect.. The river has a big influence on the readings in Portland.
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The temperature can vary a few feet. I have one sensor at 1 foot off the ground and one at 10 feet. They can be off by as much as 10 degrees in very cold weather (20ºF). I don't count either of those in my "official" data.
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I don't trust data especially temperatures which can be so different in just a matter of a few miles.
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Plus, as you state, there is the city warming effect. Heat from pavement, buildings and so on can make a big difference.
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When I lived in the midwest the city temperature in the winter was always higher than the country temperatures. It could be -20ºF in the city and -35ºF just a few miles away in the country.
@RalphCramden@gannon bill gannon
Your post here Ralph illustrates that weather data is always agglomerated and generalized BEFORE IT EVER IS COMPILED AND USED in all the existing global climatic models. Â The process does not and CAN NOT capture ALL the variability of the true underlying data. Â Sure, lots of other research uses sampled data and in this case the climate models are no different, but what is being missed might very well be an important factor or key to the variability or changes of the overall condition. Â
In short, good science must dictate: 'you don't know, what you don't know.'
Better to err on the side of traditional conservative science.
@gannon bill gannon "When I was in school, 60's &70's, the sun and water vapor were the main drivers of climate, along with the four seasons. I never had heard that CO2 was an greenhouse gas" The greenhouse effect was first discovered in the 1820's, carbon dioxide tied to it in 1896. So unless you are talking about your science education in the 1860's and 1870's then your memory of what you were taught is not up to speed.
 @RalphCramdenÂ
Oh yes, the old Galileo chestnut that has been debunked so many times but lives on in narrow minds. Please do focus all of your attention on the Galileo legend and ignore all the contrary evidence and all the Catholic scientists. The world would be intellectually much poorer today were it not for the libraries of the Catholic monks and the university system to name just a couple of facts.
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But please, don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion.
 @gannon bill gannon  @blotto  @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredEÂ
Science has always been hijacked. The catholic church did that in the dark ages. Scientists back then feared talking about things that went against the church. Same with scientists in muslim countries.
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Today science is political versus religious although there are still some pressure on science from religions.
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History is also a victim of politicians and religions.
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It's amazing how many people think that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house.
 @RalphCramden  @blotto  @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE So when was science hijacked? When I was in school, 60's &70's, the sun and water vapor were the main drivers of climate, along with the four seasons. I never had heard that CO2 was an greenhouse gas, till Albert Bore...I mean Gore put out his propaganda. Well not quite, CO2 was an green house gas for nurseries, plants love CO2. My own opinion is the government is lusting for revenue and will be looking for any and all streams, to feed it's thirst. The carbon tax is just one of many.
 @blotto  @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE  @gannon bill gannonÂ
There is no car coming down the road.
 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE  @RalphCramden  @gannon bill gannon So, would you say that until we have 100% certainty as to each component that makes up our complex climate system. Â
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If you are crossing the street and it appears a car is coming towards you, it doesn't make sense to dodge until you are 100% certain it will hit you. Â Of course, then it's too late.
 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE  @gannon bill gannonÂ
From the studies I have seen plants don't have the positive CO2 amelioration effect that most like to believe.
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Plant respiration requires the use of O2 at night and the net reduction of CO2 is pretty small. Old growth trees have a negative effect on the so called global warming gases and produce a lot of methane while the tree rots from the inside out. Once on the ground the methane production increases significantly.
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Recent studies I have read say that warming causes increase in CO2 and not the other way around.
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I am also very interested in the year round settlements they are finding at higher elevations as the snow retreats. Was the recent past warmer so that folks could live year around at higher elevations. If that is the case then maybe we are just returning to normal levels from a cyclic cold spell.
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As for anthropogenic global warming I have not seen enough "honest" evidence to convince me of that. Most of it is very tainted with politics and that makes it very suspect. People give way too much importance on humans in that they think we can actually cause all of this stuff. The earth is not affected by our measly presence.
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 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE  @gannon bill gannonÂ
The thing that bothers me is that major decisions are being made from data that may be, and in fact more than likely are, giving data that is not accurate due to the placement of the data acquisition devices.
 @RalphCramden  @gannon bill gannon Just plant a seed of thought:Â
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I think probably the majority of proponents of conventional 'climate change' presume the largest source of the problem is the combustion of fossil fuels. Sure, humans use a lot, and yes they have lots of by-products and some are very likely to be part of the problem. But....consider this: what if an even larger ACTUAL part of the problem was the level of deforestation (whence, the CO2-O2 exchange) process occurring naturally in mature forests was significant interrupted. Is it an 'energy' or 'combustion' problem? Or is it a 'land-use' issue? How would the models need to be structured to isolate the effect of each? Maybe there is more CO2 because there is less vegetation? But, is the fact there is less vegetation (and specifically, HOW MUCH less vegetation) accurately factored in to the model???
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I always come back to... 'it's one thing to say things are changing, it's quite another to say WHY they are changing'.
 @gannon bill gannonÂ
No money to be made from telling people all is well.
"Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century."
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To quote Sesame Street "one of these is not like the other". And that's a big problem. Comparing apples to oranges will result in a pretty poor analysis. I wonder if the author pulled this from a scientific report (scary thought) or just strung some facts together on their own (needs to be banned from science reporting).
Sorry Algore & UN, the earth is still in a cooling **** TREND ****
What-ever.............. Keep drinking that Kool-aid, Al Gore will make more............( Money ).............
 @STEELHEAD Whatever. So will Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter.
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The difference between you and me, perhaps, is that I've flown a Cessna over the subarctic Yukon where glaciers are on the charts but no longer there in real life. Observable. With my eyes. The locals acknowledge it, exactly the way hammerheads like you refuse to acknowledge the receding glaciers on Mt. Hood.
Especially now that Current TV is owned by Al Jazeera.
Who writes these headlines anyway?
 @jpk Jerry Seinfeld
'US roasts to hottest year on record by landslide'
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And that record extends back into history what, millions, thousands, MAYBE.. hundreds of years?
 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE Do you have a point?If a forester wants to measure those things, he'll cut down a sequoia and examine the rings. If a climatologist wants to know when a volcano erupted or how much carbon was in the air 800,000 years ago, they'll take a core sample from the poles, or from glaciers, or from Mt. Hood. This is Not Freaking Rocket Science. Agriculture--heard of it?--depends on a predictable balance of irrigation and temperature, and dies at either extreme. Most large civilizations get their water from glacial runoff or rain, so, as the glaciers recede--which they are--you can watch them start freaking the hell out.  There weren't billions of people relying on American agriculture thousands of years ago.You'll probably still be able to get Chicken McNuggets though.
 @Playanekes My 60+ trees are doing a lot to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, what about you?
 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE LOL! I grew up on a blue spruce and austrian pine nursery. Bring it. ;>
 @Playanekes Oh, and don't cut down my sequoias.  I like them a lot.
 @Playanekes "This is Not Freaking Rocket Science"
Indeed. It is far more complicated.
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The amount of computation alone to launch a Saturn rocket into the stratosphere and direct it toward a lunar intersection pales in comparison to what a typical 'global climate model' encompasses.  Plus, even modeling a phenomenon as relatively simple as 'the weather' (eg. the shorter-term synoptic condition of a regional atmosphere, etc) is a fairly complicated process -- yes, automated by the addition of arrays of sensors, computers, algorithms/models, etc) but modeling 'climate' ACCURATELY (the longer-term, and serially dependent phenomenon) is a far more complicated process. Human science just doesn't have a long enough history at the practice to know whether all the processes and assumptions built into the current methodology will produce reliable/valid/reproducible results.  Not only that, but we have only about 150 years of reasonably accurate data to be extrapolate to outside of that time frame.
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It's NOT about measuring one or even two simple things and INFERRING the past condition based upon a such a limited and / or sparse sampling of data -- the process is much, much, much more complicated than that. Just about anyone can do what you describe, but it doesn't mean very much. Â Such an approach would only explain that a difference was presumed to exist - not WHY the difference existed -- and < that, is really the key question in all this.
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Basic axiom from Statistics: 'association does not imply causation'
It's one thing to say a phenomenon is associated with <something>, it's quite another to say WHY the relationship exists.
 @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE Whatever. The people who did the computation to launch the Saturn rocket, and who are driving robots around on Mars, having landed them there, tend to agree with modern climatology models so unless you know something about computing Saturn rocket launches that they you don't, save it.The guys with robots on Mars win.Â
 @Playanekes
You can't discern differences in temperature of a few degrees from tree rings. We have only 250 years of accurate temperature records with which to make these predictions involving dire consequences from an average increase of a WHOLE DEGREE!!!. That's less than an eyeblink of time in our climate lifespan and we have people predicting doomsday on trends only a few years long.
 @B Smizzle  @ormom  @Playanekes Shucks, thanks.  I really do have to take a break from this place every once in a while when it starts sending me over the cliff.  I appreciate the sentiment. Â
 @ormom Nevermind.
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I'm a pilot. I've looked down upon where glaciers used to be in the 1990s, in the Yukon, which are gone now. I've seen it with my own eyes, discussed it with non-funded climatologists in Fairbanks, and we can all see it on Mt. Hood.I'm sure you've read some things about it, though, so, maybe you can explain to me where the glaciers northwest of Whitehorse went.
 @Festivus  @ormom  @Playanekes Haven't seen you online lately Festivus....hope all is well!  Good to see you back.  Even though I don't agree with you all the time I enjoy all your posts.
 @ormom  @Playanekes It's not the amount that's of great concern.  It's the cause.
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Historical analogues don't exist for the current situation because it has never happened before. Â We know the earth was warmer than this in the past, and we also know why. Â None of those reasons are driving climate change today.
 @Playanekes  @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredEÂ
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8284223/Some-Himalayan-glaciers-are-advancing-rather-than-melting-study-finds.html
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1350994/Greenland-glaciers-flow-slower-hot-summers-adapting-climate-change.html
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However some glaciers are shrinking, that is what glaciers do....grow, shrink, grow, shrink....if it is caused by global warming, they ALL would be shrinking!
 @Playanekes Â
1. Almost all glaciers worldwide are shrinking.....source your references please!
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2. As Festivus said "t's not the amount that's of great concern. Â It's the cause."
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http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/alaskan-glaciers-grow-time-250-years/
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http://iceagenow.info/2012/04/glaciers-asia%E2%80%99s-largest-mountain-range-bigger/
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http://iceagenow.info/2012/02/himalayas-lost-ice-10-years-study-shows/
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http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2012/jan/24/glaciers-are-growing-back-on-kilimanjaro-guide/
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 @B Smizzle  @ThePosterFormerlyKnownAsPhredE Wow. SOME are advancing. Aw, gee. Almost all of them worldwide that do not have a toe in the ocean including the glaciers on Mt. Freaking Hood, above the Bull Run Watershed, are shrinking.Â