It’s Cold. It’s Hot. Weathering Heights
This Broken Record Spins Out of Control
Speaking of the weather . . .
Of course, the flip side to all the snow and cold this winter is all the hot temperatures we had last year.
Not surprisingly, 2010 will go down in the record books as the hottest year in recorded climate history (in a statistical tie with 2005).
Why is it not surprising? Because nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since the year 2000. And unlike the causes being researched behind the unusual snow we’re seeing in the U.S., this record-setting pace is undeniably linked to climate change.
“If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long,” said NASA’s James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Worse, new research indicates that even if all current carbon dioxide emissions were stopped, or completely captured, the effects of today’s global warming could linger for the next 1,000 years.
That study was done by researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis and the University of Calgary. It is the first simulation to predict scenarios into the year 3000.
Predictions and simulations haven’t been necessary, though, for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to track the earth’s temperature for the entire 20th century.
What they found is just as discouraging. Last year marked the 34th straight year that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average, figures that their researchers said showed that global warming was continuing unabated.
The NOAA also reported that 2010 was the wettest year in history, and that manifested itself in epic floods in places like Pakistan and Australia. With that flooding continuing in Australia, and with the death toll rising daily in new flooding in Brazil, 2011 already has a gruesome toehold on what could be a new record.
“The climate is continuing to show the influence of greenhouse gases,” said David R. Easterling, a scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.