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2014: Hottest Year On Record
Layzej writes Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association. If December's figures are at least 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, 2014 will beat the warmest years on record, NOAA said this month. The January-through-November period has already been noted as the warmest 11-month period in the past 135 years, according to NOAA's November Global Climate Report. Scientific American reports on five places that will help push 2014 into the global warming record books.
closing eyes, plugging ears and singing naaaa naaa naaaaaaa. unbiblical! 'murrican dream for all
...it was the warmest year in the CET (Central England Temperature) record, which goes back to 1659.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ha...
CO2 levels measured in the middle of the ocean, far away from most humans:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_full_record.png
I'm not speculating what CO2 level is normal, what caused it, or how long it will take to go down again, but looking at that graph I would be very surprised if the average temperature temperature didn't rise.
This is a legitimate question
Since the answer is a trivial google search away, I doubt that. I found this in 5 seconds: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
The inability of the human species to extract itself from personal state to think globally is going to be our demise. If we can't recognize that we are responsible for maintaining our environment in a livable state we are in big trouble.
And it really is not "globally" any more. The entire planet is our personal space.
Of course it's a legitimate question. It's not that you're asking loaded questions in bad faith and have no intention of believing anyone who gives you an honest answer. And people who are asking legitimate questions always put climate science in scare quotes. And they would never ask a leading question that they could easily learn more about with some google searches. Nor is it trolling to make unfounded, baseless, and unsourced accusations about climate science being shadowy manipulators of data that refuse to provide any details about how they derive their work.
You're not a troll at all. Just a reasonable person interested in honest discourse. Exactly the kind of person I frequently see here on Slashdot.
(For those who are truly interested in learning more on the topic of how they correct biases in sea level temperature, unlike the guy "just asking questions" above, perhaps you might find this NASA paper informative and interesting)
No doubt man contributes to it, but Solar activity and earth history going back millions of years indicates this is a normal pattern shift.
The temperature seems to be defying its historical link to solar activity. Based on solar activity we should have been seen fairly severe cooling over the last few decades: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
No, "fudging" means to adjust the data with intent to mislead. In this case, the data is adjusted to correct for errors. If you want to accuse the scientists with intent to mislead you need to substantiate your accusations with some proof.
Didn't GT Advanced Technologies claim that their sapphire glass manufacturing process were damaged by unreliable power?
Yes, but they also explained that it is SoP for having equipment on-site to mitigate that problem, and that Apple insisted that they not install it. So in fact, the grid is already not capable of delivering power reliably, and this is hardly a mark against renewables when it's already a mark against everything. The primary reason that we can't deliver power reliably is that we have a dumb grid. Only now is this changing; PG&E for example is literally in the midst of adding sensors to their long-haul lines because they actually cannot monitor their condition. When people hear "smart grid" they think of smart meters and commercial A/C that won't activate when you want it to, but the most important parts are actually nowhere near their houses. It's all about adding sensors and intelligence to back them up to the actual transmission equipment so that PG&E knows that a line is reaching its capacity before it happens, and not after an equipment failure which is the only way they've been able to do it so far. Presumably, the other utilities in the country are in the same shape, but I don't really know about them first-hand.
Adding more nuclear production won't improve our ability to deliver reliable power, because of the inadequacy of the grid. The grid is often cited as a reason why renewables won't work, but it has to be upgraded anyway because it's not doing its job now. And it's not just monitoring; we have little unused long-haul capacity, and many towns and even cities are served by a single link. You can't call it a grid when it's star-wired.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1934 wasn't a particularly hot year across the globe. It was a very hot year in the United States, but that's not what we're talking about, is it? Science-deniers love 1934, because they love to cherry-pick data.
Q. Why can't we use just raw data?
A. Just averaging the raw data would give results that are highly dependent on the particular locations (latitude and elevation) and reporting periods of the actual weather stations; such results would mostly reflect those accidental circumstances rather than yield meaningful information about our climate.
Q. Can you illustrate the above with a simple example?
A. Assume, e.g., that a station at the bottom of a mountain sent in reports continuously starting in 1880 and assume that a station was built near the top of that mountain and started reporting in 1900. Since those new temperatures are much lower than the temperatures from the station in the valley, averaging the two temperature series would create a substantial temperature drop starting in 1900.
Q. How can we combine the data of the two stations above in a meaningful way?
A. What may be done before combining those data is to increase the new data or lower the old ones until the two series seem consistent. How much we have to adjust these data may be estimated by comparing the time period with reports from both stations: After the offset, the averages over the common period should be equal. (This is the basis for the GISS method). As new data become available, the offset determined using that method may change. This explains why additional recent data can impact also much earlier data in any regional or global time series.
Another approach is to replace both series by their anomalies with respect to a fixed base period. This is the method used by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK. The disadvantage is that stations that did not report during that whole base period cannot be used.
More mathematically complex methods are used by NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NOAA/NCDC) and the Berkeley Earth Project, but the resulting differences are small.
Do you honestly think the scientists are going to give you a signed confession reading "Yes, we mislead you!" or something?
No, I expect you to come up with some proof. That means you do your own research, and when you get different results, then you publish them. That's how science is done.
I'm old enough to remember the first moon shot. There used to be a time when the US was willing to invest billions to achieve goals and conquer technical challenges. Funny, the economy didn't collapse. It wasn't considered socialist or un-American. In fact, it was a point of pride and helped established us as world leaders. Now "American Ingenuity" is becoming a thing of the past.
While we sit around arguing whether global warming is a real issue or not, the rest of the world is moving forward with solutions. We're getting left in the dust.
I'm not sure how so many modern conservatives still manage to think of themselves as patriots while sticking their heads in the sand. It's pathetic.
A quote from Judith Curry's blog sums it up well;
"last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that."
http://judithcurry.com/2014/12...